Tatties and Ink
by FlyWolfSilver
Summary: Siblings Temari and Kankuro are worried. Gaara's not getting better; he's getting worse. The trio head to Scotland for some fresh air, albeit rainy and windy, but will Gaara finally be rid of his demons, or will he just hate himself more? AU, YAOI NejiGaa
1. Chapter 1

**Hey all. Soo.. This is my first story, and I'm telling you, it was terrifying putting it up. I honestly had no idea what I was doing. In fact, my hands still feel a little shaky. (Sad. I know.)  
****I would _really _appreciate some constructive criticism :) I've been writing since I was small, this is just the first time I've just ever bothered to upload it. As for the plot, it's touch and go. I'm LITERALLY just winging it. I don't have a plan, or a structure. I want it to be NejiGaa (I'm terribly sorry if you don't like the pairing, or the idea of Yaoi in general). Also, yes. Neji is Scottish. I know.  
Apologies to any Scottish people! I've never been there, I'm probably doing an awful shot at writing the accent, feel free to correct me if I make a cultural mistake. Also, although the Sabakus are supposedly from America... I've never been there either. So there will be no references to that, lest I offend more people.**

**I did say I was winging it. I really am.  
But, I will endeavour. I really hope you enjoy it. If you don't, no sweat, this is a bit of a trial run for me.**

**And, Disclaimer! I see people doing this all the time, so... I don't own Naruto. Sad truth.**

* * *

Gaara dropped his iPod with a clatter on the faded bronze surface of the dining table, and sighed heavily. He was alone in the sun-filled room for a brief second, and took the opportunity to clasp his fingers together in a point and push his short fingernails into the bridge of his nose. He had four seconds of quiet with which to quell his headache before the door crashed open, rattling a little on its hinges, as Kankuro tried to force his remade, recently de-limbed puppet through the doorway.

"Kan…ku…RO!"

The enraged shriek came from behind the man's back, and he turned sheepishly to meet eyes with his sister. Temari had a savage look in her eye.

The man quailed under his purple face paint, and pressed himself against the wall of corridor. With power bordering on frightful, the blonde Sabaku kicked the puppet through the doorway. Bolts popped out of it, scattering through the room with a cheerful clatter as Kankuro looked in on horror.

"_Not _a word," Temari hissed, pointing a finger close to his face and closing in on him. Kankuro pressed into the wall a little further. "It's your own damn fault for putting it together in the living room. Whose fault is it?"

"Mine," Kankuro squeaked in a quiet voice and slipped past her to begin picking up the parts of his creation.

Gaara's headache worsened a little. What the hell was he doing in Scotland? Of all the places.

"Gaara, we're going out."

The redhead left the room in silence.

Temari pushed her fingers into her temples. "Kankuro."

The brunette froze on the floor where he kneeled, his palms filled with silvery nuts and screws.

Temari didn't continue for a second, rubbing her aching forehead. "Help me get Gaara."

Her brother didn't move.  
"Kankuro."

In reply, he puffed up his cheeks, furrowed his brow and remained silent.  
Temari knew what he was getting at. "Look, you can put it together later. Puppet, or food?"

The brunette considered this. "Food with crap loads of calories."  
Temari threw her hands up in defeat. There went her diet. "Fine! The amount of exertion it will take to get the brat out of the house will require me to eat crap loads of calories. As you so eloquently put it."

Kankuro stood, poured the parts of his marionette into a bowl on the windowsill, propped the limp figure against the wall and pulled his black hood up.

"Let's do this."

10 minutes of planning later found Temari and Kankuro on either side of the room Gaara had claimed when they'd entered the cottage on the Scottish downs.  
"Pss."

Kankuro stopped contemplating the creaminess of the carpet and met Temari's gaze. She jerked her head towards the door. The brunette's eyes widened and he shook his head fast enough to make the ear-like flaps on the hood pat together. Temari stifled the urge to kick him in the gut, and neither breathed until they were sure Gaara hadn't heard.  
A flurry of comical silent argument ensued, as they gesticulated wildly at each, mouths moving noiselessly with the expletives they longed to hurl at each other. Face like thunder, Temari all but stabbed her thumb at the closed door, the door that, until then, _had _been closed.

Gaara stood where the door had been, staring impassively at the wall in front of him. Without a word, he walked between them and turned down the hallway, betraying no acknowledgement of them.

The siblings exchanged a look.

Silently, they darted after him, and Kankuro managed a brief tap on his forehead, navel and each shoulder before they each seized an arm.

"Get off." Gaara said quietly.

"Heave!" yelled Temari, and before the red head had time to protest, or kick them both in the guts, they were dragging him like a dead body back the way he'd come, each hooking an elbow resolutely under his armpits.

Kankuro kicked the door open and the three were out, into blustery, bloody freezing Scottish summertime.

Gaara shrugged them off immediately after the front door was closed and turned to face them, folding his arms.

"Yes?"

"It's lunch time Gaa," Kankuro smiled weakly, and Temari stuck a finger into the youngest's side.  
"And _you're _coming with us."

Gaara just sighed.

* * *

The local pub was a quiet place, with recently painted red letters announcing 'The Lion's Hart' a contrast with the rain-soaked roof tiles and faded green paint. Kankuro grimaced. "No… Maccy D's?" He asked hopefully.

Temari shot him a cold look. "We wanted different, we got different. Shut up and get inside."

The man entered first, grumbling under his breath. A bell pinged over Gaara's head as he uncaringly followed his siblings into the establishment, warmth engulfing his white skin and flushing it quickly back to normal heat. The pub inside was furnished in rustic copper and red, a thick burgundy carpet swallowing the feet of the mahogany tables. Tapestries in woven greens and oranges dozed on the lurid wallpaper as Gaara tried to cringe away from the onslaught of colour.

A young man in a white overall with long brown hair tied back in a loose ponytail looked up from the bar.

"Weel hello." He greeted them in a soft Scottish accent, "Noocomers!"

Temari beamed at the first friendly face in what felt like ages. "Yes, we're from the States!"

"Amerrica, huh? We haivn't go' nae twinkies in this poob." He winked.

"Not a problem," Temari chirped, elated that the first friendly face also knew what a twinkie was. Perhaps things were looking up. "But we, er, we don't really know Scottish cuisine."

The guy laughed. "Cuisine," he mocked her accent, "is a fancy word aroond haur."

"Sorry," apologised Temari, "I meant, like, _food_."

The man stared at her for a long second, before he burst out laughing.  
"For tha'," he grinned, "you'ze can deal wit' Larry."

Still chuckling slightly, he stuck a head through the double doors. "Hey! Larry!"

"Lad, ahm busy!" Came a disgruntled reply.  
"Lar', there's sum Americans, they've bin askin' fer ye."

There was a pause, and the long-haired man backed out of the way of a giant man with a beard like fire. He wore a stained chef's outfit and a slightly manic gleam in his eyes. Temari took a small, nervous step back.

"'Mericans, eh?" The giant bent down and appraised them.

"They accused me o' nae knowin' whit 'cuisine' was." The man smiled. "Dinnae be tieu hard on 'em." He lifted his hand in a parting wave before disappearing into the kitchen.

Temari gulped.

"Sooo," the chef began, planting both calloused hands on the counter and leaning forward.

Kankuro being unnaturally docile on one side, and Gaara being as unsociable as ever on her other, Temari hardened her resolve and stepped forward. "We'll have what the chef recommends," she announced. The man's eyes sparkled in a way that was anything but reassuring. "Gud choice lassie." He backed into the depths of the kitchen again.

"That was creepy," Kankuro piped up cheerfully from her right.

"Yeah, thanks for your help guys," she snapped, whacking the older brother over the head.

The trio moved to take a seat at one of the tables. Gaara edged in first, staring distrustfully at a tapestry of a very white man on a very red horse on what looked like a boat made out of a dragon. Gaara nearly put his head in his hands. The Scottish.

Shortly after came a familiar voice.

"Chef's compliments". The young waiter from before stood over their table, a platter in each hand.

Temari visibly relaxed with a whoosh of air. "Thank god," she mumbled weakly, "I was scared it would be Larry."

"Jus' Neji." He placed the dishes on the table and extended a hand to Temari.  
She took it. "Temari. And this is Kankuro, and the red head is Gaara."

"Pleased ter meet youze."  
Gaara ignored him. He was Scottish.

Aware of Temari muttering 'don't mind him', he stood abruptly and made to pass Kankuro.  
"Gaara?"

"Toilet," he answered blankly in response to Kankuro.

"The cludgie? Third on tha left," Neji called after him.

He found his way no problem and locked himself quickly in the cubicle, before he pressed his forehead against the cool door and willed the throbbing in his head to fade. He was so tired, yet he couldn't sleep. He couldn't remember how to. Not anymore.

Gaara took a shuddering breath as wet black tendrils threatened to consume him, to suck him under again. He tried to shake them off, flicking his head as though flies crowded around it, until he finally pressed his body flush against the cold cubicle door and scrunched his eyes up. From in here the hallucinations couldn't get him, but he was never safe from the memories. They lingered like patient snakes until his resolve crumbled, his hold on the rocky reality weakened, and he plummeted into the black pool inside himself.

_A grunt – breathy moan above him, tickling the red hair behind his ears. _

'_Papa' … _

_He was not Papa. Not with alcohol heavy on his breath, as he groped blindly for Gaara's leg. He pulled it against him and shrunk into the shadows of the bed, but his father found him, pulled him forwards. Unbuckling his belt and ripping at Gaara's pyjamas, in a fever, in a rage. He would hurt him. He hated him._

"_I'm sorry," he pleaded, not knowing why Papa hated him. It was Gaara's fault. It was all Gaara's fault, Gaara's fault, all his-_

Gaara emerged with a strained gasp. His knees shuddered under him and he fell heavily, his wrists hitting the floor with a painful thud. In the crotch of his black trousers, a tent had formed.  
Gaara bowed his head, tears threatening to form. He heard his father's voice, sharp and cold as it bit his ear, leaving a moat of tooth marks that would bleed for days. _You sick fuck Gaara. You aren't my son. You're sick. Turned on. You are no child of mine_.

He was a sick fuck. _Crying Gaara? Weak. You disgust me. _  
Gaara bowed his head as he closed his fist around his erection, jerking himself off with no pleasure as the words slithered through the black drapes of his mind. As he reached his climax, he lifted his head, green eyes ablaze with a red hot hate; an empty gaze that promised no mercy. No recompense. He climaxed with the image of his nine year old hands slamming his father's bloody face against their black, solid steel door wedge.

By the time he arrived back to their table, Temari was staring suspiciously at a tureen of soup that sat amongst other foreign lumps that hunkered like carnivorous beasts on the crockery.

His sister looked up as he sat down, poked a finger at the soup and explained in a slightly ill tone that it was called 'Cullen Skink'. Gaara looked down at the slab of meat sitting on the plate closest to him. It was tinged a faint off-grey.

"_That_ one's called 'finnan haddie'," Kankuro supplied helpfully as he watched Gaara eye it up.

"It's cold smoked haddock," Temari muttered bluntly, spooning the Cullen Skink into a bowl. She stuck her spoon in, drew it back out and inspected it closely. "Hasn't corroded…" she muttered distractedly, scooping a tiny amount and tasting it. The three Sabakus didn't speak for a second.

"8… 9… 10… Not dead yet, it's safe," Temari concluded cheerfully, and spooned it delicately into her mouth.

"Try the roast woodcock," the blonde said around her mouthful of soup, pushing the plate over to Kankuro innocently, before snorting at his unimpressed expression.

Face stony, Gaara ignored his siblings, dragged a random plate over and began to eat it without really tasting it. It had the consistency of glue.

"Ah, gud ter know the Haggis goos doown a treat."

Neji was back.

"Who's eating this Haggis?" Temari asked with a flutter of her eyelashes.

"Yer brother there. Enjoyin' it lad?"

Gaara placed his spoon on the bowl and fixed his blank stare on Neji. To his credit, the young Scot didn't even squirm.  
"Sheep heart, liver, lungs, with a tad o' onion ter spice it up."

Temari carefully put down her spoon. "That sounds…"

"Yer American lassie, yer dinnae have tae be polite," Neji said good-naturedly.

"It sounds gross." Temari turned a faint green.

"On th' cont'ry. Tastes o' nuts."

Kankuro squared up. "Gi'sus a try Gaar?"

The red head pushed it over without a comment.  
Kankuro dug his fork in and put it without hesitation in his mouth. He chewed for a while, swallowed, and went silent. He roved his tongue around his mouth once, before conceding.

"It does taste of nuts! Hey Gaa, you finishing this?"

Gaara flapped a hand. Everything tasted like cement to him now. It made no difference.

"Cheers man!"

Gaara was aware of Neji watching him, but he ignored him.

"Gaara, yer says?"  
"That's our little bro all right," Kankuro said cheerfully, "chuck us the pepper Temar."

"Weel Gaara, ah suggest the tatties. Goo doown a treat wit' foreigners."

Gaara looked up to meet disquietingly pale grey eyes. The man flashed him a quick smile before saluting Temari, grabbing her now empty bowl and darting back to the kitchen.

Gaara looked at the spread before him.

"Pass us…" he croaked.

Temari pushed the bowl of what looked like seasoned potato over to him. "_Tatties_, Gaa."

* * *

Gaara sat back on the patchwork quilt on his fat mattress and laid a hand on his stomach. He felt a little queasy.

Standing on unsteady feet, he made his way into the bathroom, peeled off his sweaty clothes and stepped into the shower. The knobs were alarmingly uncomplicated compared to the touch screen dials in his vast en suite at home, and for a moment he was stumped. Pressing 'on', he tilted his head back into the freezing crystal droplets. His body shuddered a moment in the sharp bite of the water, but it seemed to gradually warm up.

Gaara let his head fall forwards; the red strands plastering possessively against his forehead. Black droplets splashed onto his bare stomach and slowly trickled down in pale grey; running over his thighs or getting lost in the thicket of hair at the bottom of his navel. He wiped the soft skin under his eyes, and his fingers came away dark and bruised. He stared in intense fascination as the black ran away, hid from the clear water, down the drain into darkness.  
That was what Gaara was. Gaara was the ink you wash away, the stain you wash off your skin in a bid to clean yourself. The drain was where he lived; skulking in festering blackness as behind the peepholes he watched the cleanliness shed him off. He was disgusting. He was dirt.

Gaara threw his head back with a small scream – pale green eyes wide, pupiless. Mouth agape in a silent roar; he cracked his head against the tiles once, twice. He felt something smash. He wasn't sure if it was the peach tiling or his skull.

He slid down the wall until he rested, bare arse next to the drain. His head fell forwards onto his knees. He was so tired.  
The water stung as it pounded on his head, hitting more than solid bone. Gaara put his fingers to the crown of his skull, and they came away red, sticky. The water washed the fluid away before he'd had a chance to put it to his lips, to taste its rust.  
It was cold, he realised, the water was very cold. It was freezing. His lips shivered, chaste, bored almost. His head swum, black stars dancing in the corner of his vision as he swung his head. He cracked his head once more, and stayed there, a little limp under the ice that was being hurled at him. Icicles from his roof. Sharp. Pointy little teeth as a man screamed, animal like.

_Papa._


	2. Chapter 2

**I'm reallyreallyreally sorry... There's no Neji in this chapter. *holds hands up and waits to get shot* The next chapter, I promise.  
****I'm so psyched to have a chapter two X) And I hope whoever might be reading this enjoys it :)**

**Disclaimer: I don't own any of it. Well, I own this story. I guess. Nothing else. :)**

* * *

The bathroom door had a hole in it.

Splinters studded the floor, dotted around the door handle and lock, which lay a little away from the gap from which it was torn. Through it, the shower waited patiently; a small gap where a peach scale was missing had blood clinging on to the grey plaster under it.  
Gaara's head _hurt_.

"Don't move too much Gaar, or your bandages are gonna soak through again," Temari said softly from near his right ear.

"Young man, stay still for a minute, and mebbe I can check your cut. Dinnae worry, head wounds bleed a lot, but it's oonly a shallow gash." The strong lilt came from a man stood next to Temari, tall, with dark hair thinning at the temples. His weather-beaten face crinkled into a smile as Gaara glared blankly at him. He reached for Gaara, who flinched back slightly, before his large hands cupped the back of his head and probed the bandaged wound lightly. It hurt, but Gaara didn't allow the hiss to surface. He deserved this pain.

"Wull, thatta heal in noo time laddie, jus' sit tight and nae more headbutting things."

The man patted his shoulder kindly, causing a curl of nausea to arise in the pit of Gaara's stomach, before he indicated for Temari and Kankuro to follow him out.  
Gaara's hand hovered over the place the doctor had put his hand, wanting to brush off the weight of it on his skin, but instead he curled it tight into a fist and put it in his lap. Gaara didn't like to be touched. He was filthy. He had made the doctor filthy.

They were muttering outside the door. His siblings assumed he had bad hearing, because of his fondness for blaring headphones dug deep into his ear canals, but in fact the opposite was true. His ears were survivors.

"And, whut did you say…"  
"He has, a, um, chronic post-traumatic stress disorder." Temari sounded uncomfortable as the doctor made a non-committal grunt in response.

"So awfu'… why in tha blazes is he here, in Scotland, when he needs tae be on medication?"

"We've got the medication here," Kankuro interjected, "It's prescribed from the hospital in San Francisco, our local one, but…"

"He shoul' be there, where he cain haeve help," the doctor interrupted him in a low voice, worry evident in the Scottish tones.

"You don't understand," Temari muttered in a frantic undertone that gave the impression she was flapping her hands to shush them. "He wasn't _coping_. Everything about America was making it worse, he had hallucinations day in day out, he was self-harming, he was retreating into himself. Scotland was the furthest away we could get. The most different we could get."

"No twinkies here," Kankuro added.

The doctor gave a heavy sigh. "Fain. Bu' oour hospital is a puir little affair. An' it's far fro' here."

"Please. If he gets worse, we'll go back, obviously, but this…we're running out of options." Temari sounded distressed.

Gaara blamed himself. He was the blight on that family after all. Temari was the only female now, the mother, the head, the mother… The mother…

"Tell me whut yer gai'n to need. Ai'll stock it fer you'ze. You have a list, or summat?"

"Yes," Temari sounded relieved, "yeah, it's this way, hang on I'll – Kankuro can you just – yeah, okay thanks."  
Gaara's door swung open just as he snatched the iPod from his bedside table where one of his siblings had placed it and shoved the buds into his ears.

He looked up blankly to see Kankuro standing in the doorway.  
"Er, hey Gaar," he smiled weakly as the redhead pulled the earphones out and wrapped them around the iPod. "You'll give yourself a headache if you listen to that so soon after a head injury." He gave a nervous chuckle as Gaara silently dropped it onto the duvet and sunk back into the pillows.  
"Just leave," Gaara muttered.

"I- er, I'll just go see if Temari's finished." Kankuro agreed quietly.  
Gaara closed his eyes as his brother gently shut the door. The fool wasn't kidding, his brain felt like it had just been pulverised by a sledgehammer.

He opened his eyes fast, in a startle reflex so huge that it made his head scream in protest, at a miniscule scratching noise. A tiny excuse for a mouse ran full pelt from under the bed, across a door-stop sitting by the closed one Kankuro had just left through and into a hole in the wall. Gaara didn't watch it leave though. His eyes were fixed on the lovingly sanded triangle as it sat innocently on the thick carpet.

Unbidden, an image sprung to his mind, of a thick, black, steel door-stop used to wedge his bedroom door closed as he huddled in his skimpy summer blanket, clutching his stomach as it rumbled tiredly.  
Gaara snapped his eyes shut, eased himself down into the blanket and pulled it over his head. It smelled faintly of soap, and cinnamon. It was nice. He'd make sure Temari took that thing out of his room tomorrow.

Temples throbbing, he willed himself uselessly to sleep. He felt himself drifting – as he inevitably did every time. He would be up shortly. The nightmares never let him rest. He couldn't remember when sleep was something rejuvenating

He breathed in soap, cinnamon and hand-stitched quilt as he gradually fell into a slumber.

* * *

Small shallow nightmares kept him up into the early hours or the morning. Clock reading 12AM, he fell into sleep again, only to wake up later drenched in a cold sweat and breathing heavily. Gaara sat up, stricken, pressing his clammy hands over his thundering heart. The old fashioned alarm clock on its clawed feet read 1AM. He had to get out of the house.

Moving feverishly, Gaara flew out of bed, dragging on jumpers and boots, and on second thoughts scarves and hats, before he bolted out of the door. The hallway was silent until he passed Temari's room, from which emanated a gurgling snore. Kankuro slept silently, and Gaara edged just as quietly past his closed door to the entrance of the bungalow. Grabbing the keys from their glass bowl on the windowsill, Gaara unlocked the door and pushed it open; it emitted a screech like a wounded owl, and Gaara winced. A pregnant pause was interrupted by a deep intake of breath… and another wheezy whistle from Temari room. Shutting the door a lot more carefully, Gaara slunk out into the wee hours of the morning.

The downs stretched before him; unimaginably vast, colours leeched out of it in the morning fog which hung like a thin veil over the grassland. The mountains were only outlines in the sky, like they were drawn in pencil. It was beautiful.

Gaara set across it, each thickly booted foot landing with a soft, muffled thwump, occasionally coming away wet in a patch of soaked grass or damp soil. The redhead considered this as he picked his slow way across the moor, comparing it to his footsteps at home; sharp slaps on concrete in pinching, new shoes. Or else, digging into hot, malleable sand, burying himself. Worse when it was wet, and it was packed tight around his body, constricting his movement. He remembered when Temari and Kankuro had done that. He was six, not even three feet, and his siblings had brought sand wetted from the sea up to where their beach towels lay and laid it on him like wet cement. It had been fun until they had gone to get more wet sand, and Gaara had lay like a shellfish on a plate under the thickness of the bindings, watching his father watch him. Loving his helplessness. The gleam in his eyes as he hated him.  
Gaara wanted out of it. He wanted out of it right now. But he wiggled, his tiny limbs had thrashed, and yet only cracks had formed. Cracks in his foundation. And father had come up wordlessly, smoothed over these cracks and stared at his tiny frightened face as if he wanted to cover that up too. Sand in his nostrils, his eyes.

A freezing breeze snapped Gaara out of it.  
It smelled odd, this wind, and he inhaled it until he recognised that tangible scent of rain. How strange, that rain smelled so strongly here, when its perfume was so unnoticeable back home. Gaara wasn't sure if he liked it or not.  
He continued on his trek, wildflowers as high as his knees catching on the seams of his trousers and hugging his calves as he waded through them.  
In the distance – the sheer expanse of the land meaning he couldn't tell how far away – Gaara spotted a lake. A jetty stuck out into it, and tied to it, a tiny boat bobbed in the choppy water. Eager to see it, Gaara pushed on through the grass.

But it proved to be further away than he anticipated, and he was not even halfway there when he began to feel winded. He almost heard a murmur on the ever-present breeze, a fluttering '_useless…' _in its rain-tinged caress, but he shook his head of it and continued.

When he reached the water, he felt like dying of old age, collapsing on the jetty with a wounded gasp. But he had made it. He had actually made it.  
Gaara let a brief grin ripple onto his face and a dignified 'yes!' slip through his lips, before the heavens opened.

Gaara sat there in disbelief as the rain hammered merrily on his head. No warning. None. Was this _always _what the weather was like in the UK? Always so pissing unpredictable?

He was soaked through in seconds, his hair flattening itself against his scalp in a bid to escape the onslaught, his multiple layers quickly becoming one very thick, very wet second skin that plastered to his body and made moving incredibly unpleasant.  
And gosh was it cold. Was the rain in San Francisco this cold? He could never remember it stinging as it assaulted his face, nor seeing it drive down in the sheets that it was doing this morning; one solid, icy sluice transforming the lake into a bubbling, writhing mess. As Gaara looked out numbly across it, he could have sworn he saw a figure on the other side, far away enough to make them look tiny, moving away from the lake. But Gaara's vision blurred, or the rain covered them up, and they were gone.  
It sounded like a good plan, being gone.  
Gingerly, Gaara stood himself up, his layers of jumpers slapping wetly against his numb chest, and he made his way slowly back to the cottage.

* * *

It stood just as he'd left it when he finally arrived, lips blue, chest fluttering, fingers completely senseless. The windows of the house were dark, and Gaara was glad that he'd got back before his brother and sister were awake and panicking. It took three attempts to open the door in his clumsy state, and when he finally fell through the door he almost fainted in relief at the warm, stagnant air. He began peeling off his soaking garments as soon as he was in, draping them messily on the free coat pegs before he ran out of room and dropped them sloppily on linoleum flooring instead. Finally down to underwear and air-drying, he padded tiredly back to his room, unable to stop the shivers as he rooted through his wardrobe for the thickest, fluffiest _anything_ he could find. Luckily Temari had had the sense to instruct the men to bring plenty of thick layers, and Gaara thankfully wrapped himself in what felt like about four sheep's worth of wool.

In the living room he wilted onto the sofa, and laid his head back.  
Damn. Damn Temari and Kankuro and Dr. Keff in the hospital, damn them for bringing him to Scotland. Damn it, he liked it here. He liked it here, and it scared him.

He even liked the bungalow. It was warm in a way his other house wasn't – the red brick fireplace looked like it _wanted_ you to set it alight and curl up in front of the hearth. He liked the living room the best. Furnished in cream and red and gold, the place almost begged you to fluff up your blankets, settle in and stay there. Personal objects from the people who rented out the cottage were scattered here and there; a handmade clay mug on the antique bookshelf formed a bookend next to a well-thumbed version of _The Lord of the Rings, _paintings of poppies on large canvases hung on the walls, and on the mantelpiece above the fireplace sat an eclectic array of small ornaments and family photographs.

Gaara paused in his appraisal at this feature, and honed his gaze in on the photograph at the end. He had crossed the lush carpet in seconds, grabbing the frame and scrutinising it coldly. A young boy, barely older than about seven, proudly clutched a fishing rod in his chubby fists. Kneeling, but still taller than his son, the father draped a loving arm over the boy's shoulders. Behind them, slightly out of focus, a mother, another boy and a girl sat cross-legged on a picnic blanket, all frozen in action as they reached for what was hidden inside a wicker basket.

Gaara's hands were shaking. He was seeing double. The shiny glint of the fishing hook seemed to swing in the photograph like a pendulum, like a grandfather clock. He just stared at the tanned male arm, imagining the sun lighting up golden hair on it. His eyes roved the length of it, skipping over the boy's tubby, smiling face, to where the hand hung casually off his shoulder. Studying the stubby fingernails on the long fingers. Seeing similar fingers caked in a thick layer of drying blood as he pushed his son away, unsteadily standing up while vainly trying to stem the blood gushing out of a hole in his head. A Scottish voice punctuated the hallucination, "dinnae worry, head wounds bleed a lot, but it's oonly a shallow gash."

Hearing those abhorrent words peeling from those lips. _What are you? You're a monster…a monster._

Watching the door swing open, hearing it clatter as it knocked against the bloody freshly stained door-stop. Temari poked her pale, blonde head in, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. She'd looked at the scene… And screamed.

"Gaara?"

The red haired jerked in terror. The frame fell from his startled fingers and shattered at his feet. Gaara stared at Kankuro, nostrils flared, eyes wide.

"Hey, bro…" Kankuro frowned, looking from the destroyed picture to Gaara and back again. "You alright?"

Gaara said nothing, trying to calm his erratically thrumming heart. His brother approached slowly, hands raised slightly as if Gaara were a skittish horse about to bolt. Once Kankuro noticed Gaara quieting, he came forwards a little more confidently. "Careful Gaar, there's broken glass everywhere."

The brunet bent and began to pile the glass and broken picture frame together. He extracted the photo – unharmed in the chaos – and frowned.  
"Gaar, stop smashing up other people's belongings."

Gaara struggled to compose himself, slowly rebuilding his blank mask. "We'll buy another frame."

"Yeah, that's what I was gonna suggest, but…" Kankuro pushed the pile of debris closer to the wall and stood. "Gaara?"

The man still had the photo in his hand. Carefully, he looked at it. To him it was an ordinary photograph. He stared down at it, willing its pixels to give something away. What could have made Gaara so distressed? It was just a son and his-  
Oh.

"It triggered it, didn't it?" Kankuro asked cautiously. He wasn't like Temari; he found it more difficult to understand what Gaara suffered from. Or what caused his episodes.  
Gaara looked away.

"You can talk to me, you know that bro?" Kankuro said quietly. Shit, but was he bad at this feelings stuff.

Gaara mumbled something.

"Huh?" the brunet had to ask, embarrassed he hadn't been paying attention.

"I said thanks," the redhead snapped in an undertone so as not to wake their sister.

"Oh, I… Right. No problem. Erm, want me to take this with me?" He flapped the photograph. Gaara just nodded. "Okay then. Um. I'll see you in the morning. Good night."  
Gaara didn't respond, but Kankuro expected that. He carefully put the photograph in his top drawer before he climbed back into bed. Four in the morning. God he wished Gaara wasn't an insomniac.

Back in the living room Gaara put his head in his hands. He wasn't safe anywhere. Not even here. Not even in the most unlikely of places. Where do you escape from families? He laughed bitterly. Nowhere. What son was safe when he made his own father hate him? What son deserved to be?

Gaara tried to pull himself out of the vicious circle. He felt like a snake chasing its own tail. He felt useless.

In fact, he almost felt like going outside again. He realised, with dawning surprise, that out there where he was walking was the only point when he'd been able to shake himself of the omnipresent horror choking him. Out there, walking under a fog that lightened a dark, morning sky.

With this realisation, Gaara was almost psyched enough to go outside again. He almost stood from the sofa before the drumming on the window registered itself to him. Forget cats and dogs, it was raining dragons out there. Gaara slumped back, stumped, his all too recent experience still horribly fresh in his mind.

Sometimes it was the boredom that got to him. That gnawed him into the early hours. It was awful sometimes, twiddling your thumbs with ferocity vicious enough to break them, flicking the pages of a newspaper fast enough to tear them out. Gaara clasped his thumbs together, began twiddling. But then he looked up, up at the bookshelf, and would have smiled to himself, if Gaara ever did that.

He got up from the sofa again, snagged a blanket draped across the beanbag tucked behind the armchair and pulled the copy of _The Lord of the Rings_ out of its snug bed between the clay cup and an oxford dictionary. Gaara's eyes lingered on the cup for long enough to make out '_dear daddy' _in clumsy crimson letters. He shied away quickly, taking the blanket and the book and settling himself with finality on the bursting couch cushions.

Finally. Something to do.

* * *

"WHAT THE HELL!"

Kankuro all but fell out of bed. Hurriedly, he grabbed his dressing gown as he fled into the hallway.

Temari stood at the front door, her pretty face livid as she stared at a sopping mess of clothing secreting a large puddle of stagnant water on the welcome mat. The door behind Kankuro clicked open, and Gaara emerged from the living room, face a little haggard, clutching what looked like Lord of the Rings.

"Kankuro!" Temari screeched, and the brunet flinched. Such a tone of voice this early on? Lord help him…

"I'm here?"

"What is this..?" She hissed, evil eye secured on him.

"It's not mi-"

"That's mine."

The glare dropped off the blonde's face nearly immediately, and the two siblings turned to stare at their younger brother. Gaara looked blankly back at them.

"I went out last night."

"OUT!" Temari roared. "WHERE OUT?"

"Over the fields," Gaara shrugged and walked back into the living room.

Temari breathed like a heavily-winded bull for a moment.  
"GAARA GET BACK HERE!"

She stalked after the redhead, and Kankuro meekly followed.

Back in the living room, Gaara was curling himself back into a well-formed dent made from hours in an unmoving pose and leafing through the book he had been holding. Temari stormed up to him, pushing her face close to his and narrowing her eyes.

"It was _chucking it down _last night, Gaar."

Gaara exhaled slowly. "I know," he said in a bored voice, "I was in it."

"_Why_, Gaara?"

Kankuro paled. The girl's voice had dropped into a deadly, poisonous kind of quiet. Oh, this was not good. Because Temari couldn't take it out on their youngest sibling, so she always took it out on…  
The brunet started inching towards the door.

Gaara gave up finding his page. He'd lost it when he'd jumped at Temari's scream and dropped the book. Instead, he turned his blank glare on his sister.

"It wasn't raining when I went out," he said in a flat voice.

"Gaara!" Temari threw her hands up in exasperation. "We're in _Scotland._ It's _always _raining!"

Gaara was bored now. He shrugged, and restarted his search through the novel.

"Fine!" Temari snapped. "Kankuro!"

The man froze in the doorway. Jerkily, he turned his head to face her.

"Did you get the stuff I told you to yesterday?"

Shit. "It was raining, so I waited for it to stop, and…"

His words were cut short when Temari launched a kick into his face. He jerked out of the way of it in the nick of time.

"KANKURO! It's April! The RAINY SEASON! You don't wait for it to _stop_, you go out _in it!" _Temari snarled.

Kankuro raised his hands in the air. "I'm reallyreallyreallyreally-"

"Get dressed," Temari griped as she stalked past him, "We're having breakfast out."  
From down the corridor, she raised her voice so Gaara could here, "You too brat, I am NOT waiting for you!"

"I don't want-" Gaara started in a deadpan voice, but Kankuro cut him off, flying down at his feet.

"Gaara," his brother muttered in a strangled tone, "If you don't come… I'll be on the menu!"

Gaara growled as he walked past his grovelling brother and into his room to put on something more appropriate. He knew where they were going as well. That pub. _That _one. With the… He shuddered.

The décor from hell.

* * *

**I swear, Scottish!Neji in the next one :D**


	3. Chapter 3

**To my anonymous reviewer, NejiGaa girl, or meh meh meh :P Whoever you are, thank you so much for the lovely reviews! They really made my day.  
****I'm just going to mention, Neji is completely non-canon in this fic. He's nice, and he's Scottish. So really _really _not canon :)**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto... *cries***

* * *

It was happening again, Gaara thought, pushing the joints of his thumbs against the ridges of bone underneath his eye sockets. He hadn't been out of the house two minutes before the old headache crept up like a grinning poltergeist and began to batter his brain against the walls of his skull with the cheerfulness of a pro basketball player completely destroying a rookie opposing team.

"Gaara, wha'sup?" Kankuro asked, slowing his merry stroll along the pavement at the loss of the prospect of breakfast alone with his sister.

"Headache." Gaara replied shortly, dropping his hands; the show of weakness something that was beaten out of him a long time ago.

"Temar has tablets, right?"

"Yeah," she replied, beginning to fish in her bag. Extracting a small white box, she waved in Gaara's direction. "Take some at the restaurant, okay."

Gaara's face remained stony.

"Temari," Kankuro said wearily, "_don't_ call it a restaurant."

"Well what am I supposed to call it then," she snapped back.

"It's a hovel," Kankuro retorted, "at best, a pub."

For once Gaara agreed with his brother. In fact, a hovel probably had a nicer colour scheme.

The rain had let up at some point overnight, Gaara wasn't sure when, and the morning had dawned bright, if a little foggy.  
"Just be thankful it's not bucketing it down," Temari commented as they passed a house with a garden full of red begonias beginning to bloom.

"It will just be bucketing it down in about half an hour," Kankuro replied mournfully, his apparently melancholy morning mood determined to put a damper on the day. "Why couldn't we go to Australia instead?  
"Because Australia has the most ways to kill you," Temari countered in a bored voice. They'd had this argument every day during the month leading up to the flight to Scotland.

"Yeah, but I bet we're all going to drown here."

"You can't drown in rain," Temari fought tiredly. Honestly, Kankuro was such a baby some times.

"Pneumonia then."

"If anyone's going to die of pneumonia, it will be Gaara." Temari glared at the redhead, still not forgiving him for his excursion earlier. Gaara ignored her.

"Well the Loch Ness Monster will eat us then."

Temari lost it.

"Ow, ow, ow…" Kankuro grumbled as he hobbled into the The Lion's Hart twenty minutes later. "There was no need to stomp that hard Temari."

"There was every need," his sister hissed under her breath, before she straightened, rearranged her skirt and put on a smile as she approached the counter.

As they neared it, they could just make out the top of a brunet's head, his long hair pulled into a pony tail as he knelt and reached for something in the cabinet under the counter.

Temari cleared her throat. "Hello?" She called obviously down to the man.

Kankuro watched the affair, eyeing the way Temari ran a hand through her fringe, before consternation dawned in his eyes, and he grinned.

Temari's loud greeting startled the Scot, and he slammed his head against the top of the counter on his way up. Large, pale eyes appeared over the wooden top, his hand going to his head as he winced.

Temari cringed. "Ah, erm, sorry Neji."

"Nae woories. It's bin a whaile sin' ah had a good bump on the heid. Guess I wus deservin' it." He smiled as he dropped his hand. "An' whit canna do fer ma favoorite Americans?"

"We, um, just want breakfast," Temari mumbled, embarrassed.

"Ainything in mind in peticular?" Neji panned around all of them, blinking a little owlishly.

"What's the usual?" Kankuro asked when it seemed Temari had lost the ability of speech.

"Weel, there's tha full Scottish breakfast," Neji supplied as he pondered Kankuro's question.

"What's that like?" Kankuro seized the option.

"Weel it's like the full English breakfast, bu's Scottish."

Gaara jerked his head up at that, almost turning his eyes heavenward to pray mercy on the Scottish when God finally caught up with them, but he met Neji's eyes halfway, and the brunet dropped him a wink.

And Gaara _blushed._

Mortified beyond belief, Gaara slunk away first when Neji took Kankuro's order of 'three of those things please', and almost fell into the same table they'd taken residence at yesterday, under the tapestry of the white man on the red horse. Once seated, Temari did just what Gaara wanted to: she slammed her head down into her arms.

"I just made the hot Scottish waiter brain himself," she muttered to herself, looking distraught.

Kankuro placed his head on his hands and scooted his elbows towards her so that he leaned over the table. "I saw that," he grinned devilishly, "you have the hots for the Scots." He snickered.

Temari threw her napkin at him. "I do not!"

"You do _not_… have the hots for the Scot?" Kankuro asked in a passingly good perplexed voice, before he guffawed to himself.

"Shut up, puppet man," Temari groaned, letting her head fall back down again.

The conversation between his siblings had thankfully allowed Gaara enough time to get his red face to cool, and he had his impassive face on when Kankuro turned to him.

"Sorry, I kind of ordered for you, but did you want something else?"

Gaara ignored him.

Kankuro grinned beside him. "Well that's good news then!"

The full Scottish breakfast took forever to arrive. And when it finally did, on the long, lithe arms of the pale Scotsman, Gaara was one hundred per cent composed.

Neji placed the three huge plates he was balancing on the table, and Gaara realised Temari was not so composed.

"Neji, I am _so _sorry," she gushed.

He cut off the tirade before the blonde could get into her stride with a wave of his hands and a smile. "Like ah said, nae woories." Neji gave a little grimacing smile to her, gingerly laying a palm on his scalp. "Jus' smarts a bi'. Nae a prooblem."

Do you have a headache," Temari asked, concerned.

"Lassie, doon't woory yer wee heid aboot it, ah'll be fine in a tic." Neji's eyes crinkled into a smile at her.

"Gaara does this great massage thing, and it makes your headache go away immediately, look it'd be no problem, he wouldn't mind."

Gaara had to physically fight to keep his head up, he was so close to slamming it repeatedly on the mahogany table. Why, Temari, why?

Neji was waving his hands again, "R-really lass, ah'm feelin' loads better noo-" He shook his head again at Temari's request, but winced as soon as he had.

That did it.

"Gaara, get up, do your head massage thing on Neji," Temari ordered.

Gaara glared balefully at her.

"_Gaara,_" she hissed.

An unbroken stream of expletives bulleting through his own pounding brain, Gaara edged past Kankuro. Temari slid down on the joined seats on the table and pulled the young waiter down with her.

"Go on Gaar," she said encouragingly.

He glared at her as he edged closer to the man.

When they were facing each other, Gaara hesitantly stepped between Neji's legs and reluctantly placed his palms on his forehead, fingers curled round toward his ears.

"Where's the ache," he asked grudgingly.

"Temples," Neji replied, his eyes half-lidded.

Moving the balls of his hands round, he pressed them against the either side of Neji's eyes, which he closed instinctually.  
Hands moving in small circles, Gaara tried to concentrate on what his therapist had told him to do, and not the heat that was pooling at his cheekbones.

Pulling his fingers towards him, through the man's dark hair, he applied pressure gently to the bones in front of his ears. Satisfied with Neji's calm expression, he put both palms on the other's forehead again, laying his fingers in the soft hair, and pressed. Neji's head jerked back a little, and Gaara moved his right hand to cup the back of his head as he pressed both hands into the centre of Neji's skull. He moved them twice around the brunet's head, his blush beginning to burn through his flesh, his pale fingers unable to ignore the warm silkiness that was Neji's long tresses, until he drew back his hands, stepped thankfully out of the man's legs and backed away a couple of feet.

The pale grey eyes opened.

"Good, huh?" Temari leaned in to him.

Gaara stood awkwardly, avoiding eye contact with the man who most definitely was looking at him.

"Tha' was bloody unbelievable. Ma heidache's comple'ly gain!"

Gaara flushed deeper despite himself.

"Gaara, have you still got a headache?" Temari asked, "Maybe Neji could do you!"

The phrasing nearly made Gaara hiccup in shock.

"Och, noo, ah'm noo good at this massagin' stuff," Neji chuckled, "bu's as the laddie did me a favoor, ah guess ah coold gie it a try."

Where was the earth to swallow him up when he needed it?

* * *

Their positions suddenly reversed, Gaara sat at the table while Neji stood over him. The Scot was far, far taller than the redhead, even when they both stood, and the man towered over him as he sat miserably, Temari at his back like an anchor.

"Noo, you said you'd tok me throogh this as we goo, aye?" Neji said, a little nervously, to Temari.

"Of course," the girl fluttered her hand nonchalantly, "I know how it works, I'm just a little too forceful when I try to do it."

"A little?" Kankuro repeated sceptically, "Last time, you gave the therapist a migraine bad enough to send her to bed."

Something inside Gaara died at the word 'therapist', and he knew it was a little something Neji had to do with. For some reason, he didn't want the brunet to think him a complete headcase.

"Right Neji," Gaara heard how her voice curled around his name, and wondered if the Scot heard it too, "lay your palms on his forehead."

Neji stepped forward as Gaara had last time, nudging the redhead's limp thighs open so he could get nearer.

_Goddamn, _thought Gaara as he felt the blush rear its ugly head again. Neji's hands appeared on his head, warm and soft, and Gaara realised with a sickening sinking feeling that even if by some miracle Neji couldn't see the flush, he would definitely feel its heat.

Palms clammy, Gaara clenched them as Temari instructed the man to press on his forehead to 'warm up'.

"Now Neji, Gaara is probably not going to be responsive, but I know his headaches are usually around his eyes, under them…" Warmth on his back as Temari leaned in and indicated the area under Gaara's aquamarine eyes that always throbbed in pain. "Place your thumbs on either side of his nose, the tips under his eyes, yep…"

He blinked, and felt his lashes flutter against Neji's thumbs. The waiter had tilted Gaara's head back, but the redhead kept his eyes downcast to avoid meeting those shockingly pale eyes.

Temari's voice was now just a buzz in her brother's ears as the long-haired man flared his long fingers out to dwarf his face. The man's hands were large enough that his fingers crept back around to follow the curve of his neck, their warmth alarmingly strange in a place no one had put their hands before. The thumbs moved so they stroked the skin under Gaara's eyes, gently applying enough pressure that wouldn't hurt, and each time they returned to the bridge of his nose, that pressure increased. Either Temari was a good teacher, or this man was just a natural with his hands. The headache that near perpetually haunted the youngest Sabaku was beginning to ease.

Gaara realised his eyes were closed when Neji's hands suddenly vanished from his cheekbones, and the thumbs reappeared between his eyebrows, the fingers trailing the perimeter of his hairline.

Temari's voice made it through the pleasant hum in his head…"That's called the butterfly move."

"Mm-hmmph," the muffled sound from the Scot sounded heavy with concentration.

Gaara didn't want to open his eyes yet, to destroy this one moment of supposed peacefulness, when he heard a sharp slap, what he assumed was Temari's signature hand on shoulder gesture of approval. Neji's hand slipped from where it was rubbing Gaara's forehead, and the next thing he knew, Gaara's eye was streaming in pain.

"Fuck!" Scottish.

"Shit, Gaara, I'm so sorry!" Temari.

Gaara cracked open the eye that hadn't been savaged, caught a glimpse of worry-stricken grey eyes, before he was suddenly in a very warm, very masculine embrace.

"Soorry laddie," came the quiet Scottish voice above his ear.

He was released from the arms, and dropped his head as soon as he was. His eye was no longer streaming, but he ran a hand under his eye and his fingers came away black.  
"Fucking eyeliner's gone everywhere," Gaara muttered very quietly to himself.

"Laddie, ah doon't suggest eyeliner inna lain 'at rains oan ye most ay th' year."

Gaara froze and met eyes with the young Scotsman who now knelt close to his face.

From the direction of the kitchen came a roar. "NEJI, WE NOO HAE CUSTOMERS, SAE GIT YER SCRAWNY ERSE O'ER HAUR."

"Ah've got ter goo, ye sure yoo're alrigh' Gaara?" The brunet only stood when Gaara nodded weakly, and parted from their table with a wave and another apology.

Gaara sat forward with a groan, pressing his palm over his eye.

"Sorry Gaar," Temari said in small voice, "I may have made him poke you in the eye."

"Shame too," Kankuro added, "you looked like you were enjoying it."

Gaara threw him a one-eyed glare.

His brother threw his hands up, "Just saying! We need to get you a partner… maybe...!"

Kankuro looked far too excited at that prospect.

Temari reached over the table and smacked him over the head. The man pulled his head up just as he was about to break his nose on the placemat.

"What are you saying? Gaara's not _gay_!"

"He'sh neber said ubberwise," Kankuro retorted, clutching his nose with a wince.

"Gaara?" Temari turned to him exasperatedly.

Gaara just looked at her blankly, one eye still hidden under his hand.

Temari looked between her brothers, one clutching his nose, one his eye, and hung her head. "I swear _I'm _getting a headache," she said mournfully. "We'll find you a girl, Gaar, don't you worry," she assured him, clutching her head.

"Or a guy!" Kankuro butted in cheerfully.

This time, he didn't pull his head up in time, and his nose met the wooden table mat with a happy crunch.

* * *

By the time they'd gotten around to eating, the full Scottish Breakfast was going a little cold.

Gaara had scarfed down the black pudding, fervently remembering how much he hated cold food. He ate it at such speed that by the time he got round to the tatties, which he must have accidentally saved till last, they were still in the stages of luke-warm.

Neji came for their plates a little later. "Hoo's yer eye, laddie?" He asked cheerfully.

Gaara was no good at social interaction. His throat clogged, his breath hitched.

"It'll live," he mumbled past the lump in his throat.

"Gieud tae hear it mate," Neji laughed genuinely, clapping his shoulder as he reached to grab his plate. "Eyeliner a wee bi' better noo, too?"

The man walked off, chuckling.

Halfway through breakfast, he'd felt Temari nudge something against his knee, and he'd taken her pocket mirror wordlessly, glancing at it under the table and wiping away the trails of black on his cheek. He didn't like accepting help, and Temari did it so discreetly it didn't feel like aid. He'd handed it back, catching her eye for the briefest second. To her it was a thank you in magnitude of a hug.

Gaara reddened a little as he ignored the waiter sassily walking away from them, tugging his napkin around with unconscious hands until he realised he'd made it into a small white crane. Scowling, he pulled the wing and it disintegrated back into shapeless cotton. He didn't let many people know his hobby. His siblings did, but they knew better than to mention it.

* * *

They were walking home after breakfast when Temari began fishing through her purse. Screwing up her nose, she pulled out three twenty pound notes and thrust them at Kankuro.

"You go and buy the stuff you were supposed to get yesterday," she told him, "while there's still no rain on the horizon."

Actually, Gaara realised, there was. The heavy scent of distant rain had begun to tangle in the air around them, even if Temari assumed it was far off.

"I'll go," Gaara offered.

His siblings stopped in their tracks, mouths agape.  
Honestly, Gaara was a little surprised at himself, but he refused to let it show on his face and instead held his hand out for the money.

Kankuro put it into his hand warily, sticking his hand into the back pocket of his jeans and pulling out a crumpled shopping list.

"Are you sure Gaar?" Temari asked worriedly, "I can come with."

"No." Gaara said shortly. "I'll be fine."

"Well the shop's down that road there," Temari indicated the side road ahead of them, marked by a sign that said 'Mulder's Avenue'. "And it's not too hard to get home from there…"

Gaara just nodded, leaving his siblings still a little stunned as he split from them.

There weren't many people out, and it was peaceful to walk past the slightly wild-looking lawns and cobbled brick walls of the cottages on his own.  
Gaara saw the shop almost immediately, a red sign sitting outside a large timber barn-like place. A man in quintessentially country-like attire strolled past, tipping a tweed cap and lifting a chapped mouth into a smile as his border collie trotted behind him. Gaara nodded back slightly, heart a little fast, before he ducked into the shop.

Unfolding the rumpled paper, the redhead scanned the list.  
_Butter, milk, cornflakes, pasta, sauce, meat (ham, sausage), cheese, bread, jam._

Suddenly, he began to feel apprehensive. Gaara was not a social person. He had no idea where to find all this, which meant he had to ask someone…

His heart was just beginning to thrum like a bird's when a familiar face stepped out from behind a rack of wine.

Gaara had to do a double-take. When he looked again, he saw the lines in the face, the grey at the temples of the long dark hair, the slight tan cast to the skin. This man was not Neji.

"Weel, lookie here. Whit y'after stranger?" The man said.

"I, erm, I have a list," Gaara muttered quietly, flapping the paper.

"Hmm, gie us a peep," the man said kindly, sensing the young man's nerves.

He did a precursory scan of the items and beckoned for Gaara to follow him.

"Ye oan hooliday o' summat?"

The redhead nodded, "In one of the cottages near the highlands."

"Aye, ah knoo 'em. Whit number are yer?"

"42," he replied quietly.

"Ah," the man said, suddenly grave. Gaara looked at him.

The man met his inquisitive look and smile sadly. "Heartbreakin' story, that one, ye ken?"

The Sabaku shook his head. "Nae heard of it?" The man looked kind of surprised. "Terry lived thaur, wi' his guidwife an' three kids. Was a coople years back, he was drivin' back frae a skale play his kids waur in, an' it was mirk an' rainin' an' they waur aw asleep. Terry lost control ay th' motur oan a body corner, spin it ay control an' slammed reit intae a fa'en tree which was haverin' athwart th' road. Killed his whole family in a body gang. He was sae consumed wi' guilt, he began tae waste awa', until he began tae offer his hoose fur fowk tae rent, an' disappeared comple'ly."

The man shook his head sorrowfully. "He was a gieud man, tae."

"Oh." Gaara wasn't sure what to say.

"Aye, nae giud bedtime stories."

As the man had been speaking, he'd been filling up a woven basket of the groceries on the list. "An' here's th' cheese," he dropped it in. "Follaw me, an' ah'll ring these up oan th' till."

The redhead obeyed quietly, and as he was scanning the items, decided to brave the question.

"A-are you… related to Neji? By any chance?"

"Nej! Aye, tha's ma nephew." The man, with his similar face, smiled as he scanned the milk. "Hoo do ye knoo 'im?"

"Oh, we met at the pub," Gaara replied in a small voice.

"Aye, he's a good laddie, tha' one. Tha'll be twintie fife poonds please."

He handed over the money, grabbed the plastic bag and waved to the man slightly as he left.

It was raining, wasn't it? Of course it was.

Gaara stood in the doorway of the shop, staring sullenly at the large pellets of water as they peppered the ground. Scotland really didn't hold back, did it?

He sighed as he pulled up his hood and stepped into the downpour. His anorak plastered against his back immediately, shrinking away from the fury of the rain. Gaara pushed on, making a shortcut by going straight ahead, rather than turning left to reach the point where he'd split from his siblings.

Trudging through the downpour, he tried to push Neji's uncle's story out of his head. He just kept seeing the long tanned arm over a young boy's shoulders, the gleam as the sun glanced of the fishing hook.

Gaara pressed a hand over his mouth, feeling a little queasy.

But that they were all dead… No, that just was wrong.

Furiously, he shoved the image out of his mind and grasped the slippery plastic handles tighter in his cold grip.

He was still walking ten minutes later, starting to shiver horrifically. He felt the bag slipping a second later, and tried hard to clutch it even as his numb fingers complained. It didn't matter though, as the handles fell from his grip and the bag opened on the wet floor.

Hastily, Gaara began shoving the items back inside, ticking them off in his head.

That was everything but the-  
The pasta sauce had rolled off, and was starting to pick up speed down the slight slope he was walking on. Cursing, the redhead grabbed the bag and ran after it, losing sight of it briefly in the thick rain, until he skidded to a halt beside it. It had gotten lodged on a sopping wet cardboard box that was slumping on the roadside.

Now winded, drenched and freezing cold, Gaara was tempted to put his foot through the bloody jar, but he forced himself to drop it in the bag.

He began to walk away, seeing a road sign signifying his street, when he though he heard something; a tiny bubbling cry.

He paused, waited for it again.

There was nothing for a long second in which the rain drummed happily on Gaara's dripping head, when it came again. The red head approached the box tentatively, hearing a quiet scritching noise inside, and gently peeled back the flap.

Inside, an absolutely soaking kitten mewled pitifully, huddled inside the caving card, its tiny tail curled around itself.

Gaara was completely bemused. Was this thing… abandoned?  
He dropped the lid and backed off, trying to assemble his thoughts. What should he do? He turned to head home when another weak meow warbled in his wake.

Spinning, Gaara opened the box again, dug out the kitten and tucked it inside his jumper, before making his way hurriedly up the dirt track to the house.

He supported the tiny lump with one hand as it quivered against his t-shirt. Looking up, he was relieved to see the familiar slash of red that was the front door of the the brick house as it huddled on the edge of the moor like a weathered farmer. He all but fell into the house a second time, to be enveloped by a shrill 'GAARA, OH MY GOD YOU'RE SOAKED!"

The redhead thrust the bag at Temari, who shoved it at Kankuro who obediently took it into the kitchen. His sister then threw the huge towel she was carrying over his shoulders and scrubbed his hair with it. Slipping off his water clogged shoes, he allowed her to escort him into the kitchen, where he shivered and dripped on the tiles.  
Teeth chattering, he forced out his words. "C-c-can y-you get another towel p-please."

Kankuro brought one in, and Gaara gingerly extracted the kitten from his clothes which it clung on to with pale shrieks.

He wrapped it in the towel Kankuro had, and held it in his arms as he waited for the shivers to stop.

"You bought a cat!" Temari yelled, fingers trying to pry into the folds of the towel for a closer look.

Gaara held it away from her. "Found it," he muttered.

"Oh my god, it's cute, let me see!"

Gaara wrapped it protectively in his arms. "Let it calm down first."

Later, dried and thankfully warm, Gaara brought the kitten into the living room and set it, inside its towel, down on the carpet. It poked an inquisitive head out, large brown eyes staring at the three siblings around it.

"Here kitty," Temari cooed, clicking her fingers. Gaara shook the bottle he was holding slightly, and the kitten's head whipped round immediately. It skittered on unsteady paws toward the redhead and stood up against his knees. A little unsure, he offered the baby the bottle, and it eagerly took hold of the rubbery teat and startled to suckle with soft, happy mews. Gaara stared down at it in wonder as its eyes closed happily.

It was what Temari called 'Tortoiseshell'; white legs and tail, with a splatter of orangey brown and black across its back, continuing over its head and ears and down to its nose. It had a little black splodge on its chin, which quivered as the baby sucked on the bottle.

"Can we call it Missy!" Temari squealed.

"No." Gaara refused immediately.

"Is it even a girl?" Kankuro scoffed, "I want to call it Rex!"

"It is a girl, Kankuro," Temari snapped back, "and she's called Missy."

"Gaara just said no, and technically it's _his_ cat," her brother retorted.

"But Gaara doesn't like animals," Temari countered, and they both turned to look at their youngest sibling.

"She's called Box," Gaara decided.

"Box," Temari growled, "is a _stupid _name for a pretty girl cat."

"Yeah Gaar, there must be another name," Kankuro agreed.

Gaara glared at them both. "I found her in a box," he said slowly, unusually narked, "So I'm calling her Boxie."

"Boxie…" Temari tested it out. "It sounds…"

Boxie let go of the teat of the bottle, finished, and with a small peeping sound, jumped onto Gaara's lap, curled up and promptly fell asleep.

Gaara raised an eyebrow.

"_Fine!" _Temari huffed, defeated, "She's called Boxie."

Cautiously, Gaara rubbed the kitten on her forehead as she began to make gentle whistling noises. A strange warmth filled him as he fondled her tiny, delicate ears, and he would have smiled, if Gaara ever did that.

* * *

**Review for the kitten? :3**


	4. Chapter 4

**To the anonymous reviewer, yes you ;P, it was the 'BYE BYE' that gave it away I think ;) But I'm really glad someone is enjoying this fic, I'm really writing it for enjoyment rather than views now, but it's nice to know there'll be someone looking forward to it ^_^ **

**And thank you for consistently making a note of my spelling and stuff, I don't have a beta, so I go through it with a fine pick comb myself to see where I've gone wrong :D**

**To others who have reviewed and favourited... Thankyou T_T**

* * *

"We're going out today."

"Ou' where?" Kankuro asked Temari, cheeks puffed around an impossibly large mouthful of porridge.

Temari stared at him distastefully. "_Must _you eat like you were raised in a barn?"

Kankuro made a noncommittal noise.

Temari scoffed, irritated. "You don't even_ like _porridge! Why the hell are you eating it, especially with that dumb dreamy look on your fat face!" She spat.

Kankuro stared placidly at her, unruffled, before he stuck his spoon in, swirled it vigorously around and shovelled the fist-sized mess into his waiting mouth. "Cosh it'sh got nutsh, and golden shyrup, and shultanash," Kankuro garbled, an ecstatic haze clouding his vision.

"I'm going to puke," Temari informed him in a bright tone, and gathered her and Gaara's empty plates with a dark expression when her brother completely ignored her.

Gaara took no notice of either of his siblings, absent-mindedly stroking the head of the kitten that dozed lazily on his lap.

They will have been in Scotland nearly one week as of tomorrow, Friday, and Gaara considered this as his blunt fingernails scratched behind miniscule orange and black ears. One week, and his only awful phase had been right at the beginning, in the bathroom, the pub, the cubicle as his father clawed into his mind and ripped it up, biting him, arousing, _crushing_-  
He shook his head, trying to clear the awful flies that buzzed in it, and focused instead. The nightmares were ever-occurring; grim, horrific plagues that crawled into his shallow dreams and unfurled like poisonous spiders before his widening eyes. The one last night had been particularly bad. Bright spots of saturation, colour in unreal abundance and flowers bursting into life everywhere. He'd spun on the spot in pure joy. The emotion was foreign to him; the happiness that filled his pores and his very heart turning into a water-tight bowl that cupped the feeling that rained from the sky in golden drops and filled him to the brim. He walked bare foot through grass that glowed in his tentative wake, and in the dream he'd approached a wicker archway entwined with leaves in a soft gold. Inside was a garden, a beautiful luscious place that called out to him in lilted tones.

But as he'd approached, a peacock garbed in no colour on earth stepped out from behind the arch – slowly turning to face him through the glorious leaves. Deliberately, its tail feathers lifted, spreading wide and far, filling the archway, filling his sight… each bulbous end a meticulous replication of his father's face as his leathery lips pulled into a manic grin. Laughter from those twisted mouths issuing in black bubbles and bouncing off the golden leaves; each they touched shrivelled and withered away. They fell to the floor and erupted into sad little flames, emitting pale, ghostly screams as they burned into ash.

Each gruesome mouth opened in unison, and the shriek of a hundred of his father's voices burned away the glory behind him.

_You killed her you killed her you killed her you killed her you killed her, it's your fault it's your fault it's your fault it's your fault it's your fault, you killed her. You killed her. You did. You._

The laughter echoed around him as he surfaced from sleep with a burbling cough.

Gaara shuddered, the rippling movement awaking the sleeping kitten. She yawned, revealing little baby teeth poking from her pink gums, rolled a little on her back in the warmth of the redhead's lap, and finally launched herself off of the man she loved the most. She hit the floor smack on her face, mewling in distress as she picked herself up and hobbled away. She squeaked a quick good bye to the youngest Sabaku before disappearing into the hallway.

"Can't believe you found the only cat that never lands on its feet," Kankuro grinned, dropping his spoon with in inarticulate clatter and thrusting the bowl at Temari to put in the dishwasher. She grabbed it with a growl, slapping her brother over the noggin as he casually put his hands behind his head and groaned about the girth of his stomach.

"I like her." Gaara argued dispassionately. He'd never had any pets before, not had any desire to after the horror that had been his father's English Pitbull Terrier, but the truth was, he really… well… _liked _Boxie.

"Then that's fine," Temari assured him, snagging the super-size packet of porridge Kankuro had insisted they buy before the guy could stuff his entire head in and snort the dried grains.

Watching the box disappear from snorting reach, Kankuro folded his arms over his black hoodie and narrowed his eyes at his blonde sister. "I want a llama, but am _I _allowed one?"  
Temari closed her eyes in horror. _Not this again…_

"We have no _room_ for a llama," she hissed with diminishing patience.

"We have room for a cat!" Kankuro pouted.

"A CAT IS TWENTY TIMES SMALLER THAN A LLAMA!" She screamed, infuriated beyond belief.

Her brother shrugged. "Just saying. If you feel left out, you could get a unicorn."

Temari was at loss. "Unicorns don't exist Kank."

The brunet frowned. "They don't?"

Gaara got up and left just as Temari fell to her knees, placed her hands on the warm tiles and began to keen in pure agony.

The laughter of the Sabaku who _acted _the youngest pealed out of the kitchen door behind him as he shut it.

The reason Temari wanted to go out that day was because, for the first time since they'd arrived in Scotland, the sky was as blue as a field of cornflowers. Small white clouds ambled like aimless sheep across the foreign azure expanse, looking for all the world like they were just enjoying the sunshine. Gaara unlocked the backdoor and stepped out into the luke-warm air. Despite the sun, the wind still carried an Arctic chill, and so he wore a burgundy afghan cardigan-like _thing_ that was a complete embarrassment to every single smidgeon of his small self-esteem. The woollen atrocity reached his knees, and the long arms covered his small hands down to the very tips of his finger nails. However, it was warm. He just tried to avoid mirrors.

Winding away from the house on his left, the small dirt track led to the little village of Altnaharra where the trio had been staying; the small clump of cobbled houses and roads looking fresh-faced and optimistic in the weak rays of the sun. Gaara took a couple of steps out across the wooden veranda, leaning on the carved rail as the wind played with his hair.

The terrace hadn't been used for their entire duration simply because it was always water-logged, but now that rain was finally at bay for the time-being, Gaara didn't mind the slightly damp wood in favour of the _view._  
The splendour of the Scottish Highlands stretched before him, their yellow-grey wild grass peppered through with streaks of lavender and purplish heather, clusters of periwinkle and the reddy pink of gatherings of flowers Temari had informed him were called 'Flowering Currant'.

Here and there stood the skeletal lone structures of skinny trees bravely putting out vibrant cherry blossoms. Occasionally, a gust of wind would spurt across the downs and the air would be filled with a brief flurry of petals as they danced prettily over the small wildflowers.

"Gaara!" Came the shrill call from back within the house.

They were heading down into the village to a small firm that lent cars out to tourists. Gaara, of course, hadn't voiced his worries, but he secretly thought that '_Billy's Happy Moturs'_ sounded suspicious and he was not exactly thrilled to be borrowing some tin can from such a creepily named place.

Shrugging off the woollen fashion horror, the redhead ducked back into the house and followed the sound of his sister berating Kankuro for having 'another damn bowl of porridge.'

* * *

Gaara slumped in new waterproof boots down the dirt path in a horror of a mood. Muttering foul things under his breath, he cast a glare of absolute death at his blonde sister, who was obliviously nattering to Kankuro about the benefits of Scottish cuisine to an American stomach.

Twenty minutes ago, back at the house, he'd been sullenly pulling on his black raincoat, wanting to just spend this nice day with Boxie and no one else, when Temari had strode out of her brother's bedroom with something familiar bundled in her arms.  
"Gaara."

Gaara winced inside. There was no arguing with that voice.

"You are not wearing that."

"Why?" he asked wearily.

"It's too skimpy. You'll be cold. Here."

Gaara recoiled from the awful fashion statement that was being offered to him.

"Gaa_ra_."

"No," he refused immediately. "I will not wear that thing out."

Temari looked hurt. "I bought it just for you."

Not even hurting Temari's feelings would make him wear that monstrosity.

"It's an obscenity. Even Boxie doesn't go near it."

Rather than be impressed that Gaara had emitted a whole sentence with little difficulty, Temari's face screwed up in what the Sabakus called 'The Face of Ultimate Doom.'

Rather than be burned to a crisp by the inevitable laser glare Temari had spent years perfecting, her brother took the clothing between finger and thumb like a rattlesnake, and with a long look of loathing, put it on.

And that was why Gaara was wearing the long burgundy afghan over his black trousers, thin, long sleeved grey sweater and evil expression.  
It was a face that lasted all through the village to the small barn shop which seemed to have perked up like a winter flower in the sunshine. Gaara skulked outside while Temari and Kankuro popped in to buy a map of the surrounding countryside.

"Here Gaara!" Temari threw him a small red ball as she came out, map in one hand. Reflexively, the redhead caught it.

"We told Neji's uncle that you were in a mood, and he said it was on the house."

Neji's uncle, Hiashi Hyuuga, had taken quite a shine to the introverted American, and after discovering the younger man's weakness for a certain brand of sour cherry gobstoppers often slipped him one free of charge. Grudgingly, Gaara slipped it into his mouth, and tried to restrain the contended expression from crossing his face.  
He scowled at Temari when she beamed at him. No way was he letting her off.

"Okay, Billy's Moturs should be around-"

"Happy."

Temari paused to stare at Kankuro, who was matter-of-factly sucking on the end of a large jelly snake.

"What?"

"Happy. Happy Moturs."

Temari sighed. "Kankuro. Be quiet."

* * *

They found the place tucked behind a small bunch of hunched bungalows, a faded yellow sign with a picture of a grinning yellow cab on it.  
Gaara stared at it warily. The place looked a little tired; the black paint on the garage door was chipping away to reveal the pale baby blue that was underneath it.

Temari took tentative half-steps into the recesses of the garage, which was open, the bonnet of a rusted Beatle poking into the sun slightly.

"Hello?" She called into the empty room. A door at the other end was ajar slightly, light cracking out of the gap. She tried again, a little louder. "Hello?"

"Hello! Hi!"

The door that had been partially open swung open with such vigour that it rattled against the wall.  
"Customers! Hello!"

His English accent was blatant as the man ushered them outside again. The bright sun revealed a man whose hair matched, and even glowed brighter than the shafts of light that slanted over his tanned face. At first glance he seemed young, but a closer look revealed slight laughter lines fanning from his azure eyes, the lips chapped from the blustery Scottish weather, and ruffled hair whose diminished shine highlighted the radiance it'd had in his youth.

The man proffered his hand to the blonde American. "Minato Namikaze, splendid to meet you."

Temari took the hand with a slightly breathless laugh – even if he was older than her, this man still oozed attractiveness. "Temari Sabaku, and my brothers Kankuro and Gaara."

Minato smiled at them and ushered the trio into the black door next to the open garage. It smelled, Temari noticed, of men inside, the odour that accumulates when there is no woman with every bacteria-killing spray to bleach the place to within an inch of its life. The house was tastefully decorated however, small touches like a carved swirl in the corners of the skirting board and a peep of a lavish rug sitting under a glass coffee table as they were showed through the house to the kitchen hinting of a feminine hand.

The kitchen was a pretty affair too; a quaint island floating in a pool of heated cream tiles, and light wooden cupboards lining the peach walls under a fiery granite kitchen top. Minato gestured for them to be seated at the island and started to bustle around the kitchen.

"Tea?" He called.

Kankuro shot a bemused look at Temari, who reciprocated. They were only after a hire car after all.

"Please," the blonde replied.

Minato dropped a cheeky wink. "No idea what you all drink in the land of the free, but I'm here to show you a quality British cuppa."

He threw in the bags with a flourish and nearly threw the three cups across the counter, following them with an entire litre of milk and a pot of sugar. Seating himself opposite them, Minato drew the cup towards him and took a long gulp. He set the mug down with a clink and sighed happily. "Just can't beat PG Tips, right?"

"Erm, right," Temari agreed weakly, watching as the blonde Englishman almost upended the milk carton over his drink and filled the cup back up to the brim again.

"But," Minato said cheerfully, wrapping his long fingers around the cartoon face of the frog on his mug, "you aren't here to drink tea with me, are you?"

"No," Temari admitted, "we're actually looking to hire a car."

Minato slurped his tea unashamedly. "I see."

"Do you have one?"

They had to wait a second for Minato to stick his scalded tongue into the air and flap his hands a little. "Yes," he said when he recovered, "But you'll have to wait for my son to return."

"How long will that be," Temari asked anxiously, not trusting the weather report that had been on the TV that morning.

"He should be here in a few minutes." The blonde man leaned forward into his tea. "He goes to university in England, so I don't see him much."

"Yeah, um, what's a Brit doing in Scotland anyway?" Kankuro asked, gingerly spooning sugar into his tea.

"My friend, Bill, passed away couple years ago." Minato shrugged at their murmured apologies, "and the last thing he said to me was 'Happy Moturs'll gae oot o' business!'. The man mimicked the accent like a native. "So I said I'd take care of it as I was living in Scotland anyway. Then my son left for England again, and I stayed here."

His weathered skin cracked into a huge smile as the obvious sound of the door opening was heard by the four.

"Dad?" - The voice that had shouted was loud, deep and very, noticeably English.

"In here son!" The man called back.

The door to the kitchen opened shortly after and a tall boy with hair the same electric shade as his father's walked in. "Hey – guests!" The young man grinned.

Minato stood and moved around the trio sitting mutely at the table to clap his son's shoulder. "They're after the car you borrowed to see Nej."

"Ah," the blonde guy grimaced slightly.

Minato rolled his eyes. "What?"

"Well… er, I kinda promised…" The younger version of Minato tailed off sheepishly.

His father sighed. "Naruto, this is Temari, Kankuro, and… what did you say, Gaara?" Minato asked a little apologetically.

Gaara nodded boredly.

"The SABAKU family?" Naruto shouted.

Minato clapped his hands over his ears. "Son."

"Neji's told me about his 'favoorite 'Mericans'," Naruto grinned, dodging around his father and sticking out a large tanned hand to the closest, which was Gaara.

The redhead felt beads of sweat roll up along his palms at the sight of the extended body part.

"Gaara, huh?" Naruto asked when the young man didn't accept it immediately, "Neji reck'ns you're the 'cute' one. Nice to meet you!"

Too terrified to not clasp hands with the man who seemed determined to remain in his pose until he did, Gaara accepted the handshake and was promptly pulled from his seat into a hug and pounded over the back as the blonde laughed warmly in his ear.

"There we go, love the cardigan sweetheart." Naruto released him and moved on to Kankuro.

Mortified, the redhead dropped back into his seat as the blush saw fit to turn his face what felt like an ugly puce.

He watched Naruto discreetly as the man dropped to his knees and kissed the back of Temari's hand as she giggled in a schoolgirl-like manner.  
His hair was even brighter than Minato's, a shocking yellow that Gaara could only assume was natural, along with his father's ultramarine irises. On both his cheeks, were three darker lines. Gaara had at first thought they were scars, but a closer look when the prat hadn't been grinning into his face and talking about his cardigan revealed that they looked more like birth marks. The skin was smooth as the rest of his face, and the three almost whisker-like marks varied a little in size and shape. Naruto was wearing little considering it was still cold outside, and his short sleeved blue shirt revealed the muscled biceps of his tan arms.

Temari was obviously finding it hard to keep her wits about her when faced with such a specimen.

"Naruto." Eyes closed in a look that said he'd seen it all before, Minato slapped his son over the head with what looked like a copy of Harry Potter. "Stop flirting, and explain."

"Ah well," Naruto reached a hand behind his head and ruffled up the spiky blonde hair there, "I might have promised Neji we could all go down to the motorbike fest, y'know, 'cause his car broke down recently." The man grinned shamefacedly.

"Let me guess, Dei's going with you too?"

"And Neji's cousin…" Naruto shifted cheerily in his seat next to Temari.

"And you didn't think I would have customers..?"

"Sorry Pops!" Naruto laughed.

Gaara could see the endearment was a weakness on his father, whose face had softened a little.

"Well, I don't know what-"

He was interrupted by a whoop.

"MOTORBIKE FEST?" Kankuro yelled, "Fantastic!" He looked towards his sister, eyes shining. "Temari, let's go?"

Temari scowled. "We can't just-"

She too was interrupted.

"THEN THAT'S SORTED!"

Naruto was looking between Kankuro and his father with blazing eyes. "I am PUMPED for this!"

Kankuro looked like he'd found a kindred spirit.

Minato put his head in the hands as Naruto slung an arm over his shoulders. "Has Neji okayed this?"

"_Neji?" _Naruto parroted incredulously, "He loves these guys!"

He grinned at his father, his handsome face catching the rays of sun and making the skin glow a warm, rich colour, sharp cheekbones only accentuated by the uncommon patches.

"You won't all fit in the Fiesta though, no matter what you think," the older man chided.

Naruto's attractive face fell.

"Take the Beatle," Minato amended quickly, and his son's expression lit up immediately.

"You really mean it?"

The blonde man shrugged. "It's road worthy."

"You're the best Pops!" Naruto yelled and threw himself at his father.

The mellow man muttered something that sounded like 'such a bother', but his eyes sparkled softly.

Gaara was dying. A road trip. With a bunch of random people. And Neji. To see motorbikes. In a hideous cardigan. What in that plan sounded good? Nothing did. Nothing at all. But Kankuro was so hyped, jumping from his seat like he had a spring up his bum and launching himself into Naruto's arms as the two clapped each other's backs and laughed in loud, manly voices.

"Well," Temari interrupted the undisguised bromance in front of her face, and for one brief, shining moment Gaara saw light.  
No chance. "I guess that I can endure motorbikes for just one day."  
Gaara would have cried, if he would ever willingly ruin his eyeliner.

Waving goodbye to Minato, who spread a paper open on the tabletop and set about making another cup of tea, Naruto beckoned them all outside, and as the trio traipsed in various stages of cheer back through the bright hallway Gaara spotted a small photo in a silver frame. Brushing close to the wall, he had to briefly crane on his tip-toes to see a younger Naruto slinging an arm around a round-faced Neji as he threw a peace sign at the camera. Something dark and horrid curled in Gaara's stomach, and he hurriedly dropped down and shuffled docilely behind his family as Temari looked over her shoulder. Raising his eyes to stare through the red hair fanning his forehead, Gaara glared at the part of Naruto's toned shoulder he could see under his fringe. What the hell was the relationship between these two anyway?

All ready to make a run for it when they left the Namikaze abode, Gaara was horrified to see Naruto run to a mud-splattered red Ford Fiesta, against which rested a lean man with long blonde hair a paler shade than Naruto's; the top layer of which he'd twisted into a ponytail. On his right side was a girl who looked the same age as the redhead, her raven hair gleaming with a subtle blue tone in the sunlight. When she looked up at Naruto, face reddening quickly, Gaara recognised her pale, wide irises. The same irises that were also trained on the blonde as Neji flicked a long strand of hair over his ear and grinned at him.

"'Ru, serioosly, whit took sae lang, we'll be late."

"Don't call me 'Ru', dick," Naruto scolded, laughing, aiming a light punch which Neji dodged easily, chuckling. "I brought friends."  
He stepped out of the way to reveal the Americans trailing uncertainly behind him.

"Och," Neji sounded surprised, and Gaara cringed away from the polite rejection he was sure would follow. "Hoo come they're haur?"

"I kinda stole the car they wanted to hire," Naruto turned toward them and winked at Gaara. Temari mistook it to be at her, and giggled. "So I invited them!"

"Naruto," Neji rolled his eyes, "Alweeys th' gentleman."

"_What?_" Naruto's laugh was a boom. "You're the whole 'manners mean nothing' type Nej!"

"Ah learnt frae th' best," Neji kicked at his friend's knees, and Naruto reciprocated by aiming to take the brunet in a headlock. Neji fended him off, a wide grin stretching his face.

"Yeah, I remember all too well, _Nej_." Naruto sighed dramatically. "You were a little bitch before you met me."

"Aye, cheers Ru," Neji said wryly.

"Now you're _my_ bitch," Naruto grinned evilly, and tackled Neji into an aggressive hug.

"Gie arff, ye fat loomp!" The man yelled as Naruto tried to kick his knees out and get him on the ground. The blonde released him, huffing a little in exertion as he laughed at the Scot.

"I'm Deidara, by the way, un." The other blonde interjected dispassionately.

"Oh! Yeah, shit sorry!" Naruto laughed a genuine laugh and threw an arm around the lithe man who hadn't changed position the whole time.

"This is Deidara!"

The other blonde sighed. "Yeah, well, they know that now, un."

"And Hinata!" Naruto cried, completely ignoring Deidara as he gestured to the shy raven next to him.

"She's awful pretty, isn't she?" Naruto nodded twice approvingly. "Right! Seating arrangements!"

"Naruto-"

"Yes Nej?" Naruto batted his eyelids in a falsetto manner.  
Neji looked torn. Torn between what, the red-haired Sabaku couldn't tell.

"Nej, if you're a buzzkill today, I _will_ rip off your dick and feed it to Deidara," he threatened.

"Erm, ew?" The pony-tailed man frowned. "I like my dicks attached to something thanks, preferably a man."

Naruto winked in the Americans' general direction again. "Ah, our friendly, local raging homo." Kankuro looked a little disturbed, but Temari laughed, and Naruto winked at her.

He turned again to bang on the hood of the Fiesta. "Kankuro." The blond's face was solemn.

The Sabaku brother looked nervous. "Y-yeah?"

"You have the most important job. Are you ready?"

Looking green, Kankuro just nodded.

"YOU." Naruto stabbed his index finger at the brunet. "Are GIRL-KEEPER!"

There was a heavy pause.

"What?" The American looked confused.

"WHAT?" Temari shrieked.

"You transport our fragile little beauties in this wagon of protection-" another bang on the bonnet, "To get them safely to our destination, SAVVY?"

"Uh… What?" Kankuro asked thickly.

"Ignair heem, he's daein' a degree in classical literature," Neji explained tiredly, "He talks oot ay his erse soome times."

"I do NOT talk out of my arse, _Hyuuga!" _Naruto protested indignantly.

"Aye. Ye doo."

"And you eat deep-fried mars bars – WHAT?" The Englishman hollered when the Scot threw him a half-lidded look of disgust.

Just when the Americans began to recoil from the hate vibes emanating from the two, they cut off as the pair started to laugh. Gaara watched the brunet's face as his eyes narrowed as he smiled at the blonde, and felt that black curl of jealousy like a hard pip lodged in his throat.  
Naruto reached over and clasped the Scotsman's shoulder and indicated for Temari and Kankuro to come over.

Temari looked back at Gaara. "And our brother too," she smiled at the blonde.

But the guy shook his head. "No room."

"What?" the blonde girl asked, confused. "Why not?"  
Naruto shrugged and opened the passenger door. The entire left and middle seats were obscured by a monstrous picnic basket. "Food."

"Oh my god."

Temari rolled her eyes at Kankuro's mind-boggled expression.

"Then Kankuro can go with you."

"Kank looks like a scary man. You need him for protection," Naruto said seriously.  
Chest puffing with the praise, the brunet looked pleased with himself.

"Dei, Nej, Gaara - with me."

Gaara paled. What the hell was going on?

* * *

Temari had protested – oh hell had Temari protested – but when it all boiled down to it, Gaara still sat awkwardly in the back seat of the rusted Beatle as it rattled disturbingly loudly down the road.

Gaara stared intently out the window, desperately zoning out the trio chattering in the car. His gaze was so intense he was surprised the window didn't give up the ghost and melt away; a concentration at such a level that when he felt a sharp tug on the sleeve of his afghan woolie, he almost jumped high enough to hit the roof of the car. He turned jerkily to glare into the penetrating gaze of Deidara's one visible eye. The pupil had contracted in the sun, allowing the redhead to pick out flecks of onyx and silver around the centre.

"Yes?" Gaara asked irritably.

"I like this." The second Englishman played with the hem of Gaara's burgundy cardigan.

Gaara tried to yank it out of the grasp of the long, elegant fingers, but they proved stronger than they looked brittle, and they came away with a thick thread of maroon.

"Deidara," Naruto reprimanded cheerfully. "Stop destroying the guy's clothing so early."

"Oh, there's time alright." The blonde twirled the dark red strand close to his mouth. Unsure how to respond, Gaara instead settled for a stony glower.

He turned away from the strange man, meeting Neji's concerned gray eyes in the mirror. Glower even more present, Gaara faced the window again.

If Gaara ever cried, now would be the time. Darkly, he considered his disposition. A wheezing car which, by the sound of the hissing pops, possessed a faulty brake line, filled with three guys, two of whom had a weirdly close connection and the third who was just a horny string-sucker, albeit an attractive one.

Gaara pressed his forehead against the cold glass as he felt fingers press briefly against the small of his back, causing a cold ice to rattle up his spine.

"Get off," he snapped to the intrusion, accidentally getting snared in Deidara's deep blue pools again.

The blonde threw his head back, "Dirty talk, yeah _baby!" _He rolled his head on the cushioned head rest and dropped the redhead a suggestive wink.

Gaara sighed. He freaking hated motorbikes anyway.

* * *

**Oh! I know this chapter has taken.. erm... forever. (It really feels like it), so in apology, I drew a picture of Gaara ^3^ - wolfinthedarknesss . deviantart #/d4xc905 ... Just get rid of all the spaces between the dots :D**

**[Edit]/:  
One more thing I just want to explain - 'Altnaharra' is a real place in Scotland, but it is _tiny_ and, to my limited knowlegde, consists of, just about, a hospital and a few scattered houses. THEREFORE my descriptions of it are from my own head. Thanks. I don't know why this was bothering me, it just was.**


	5. Chapter 5

**Heavens. I am so sorry. It's been, what, two weeks? I have an excuse. A levels. Final exams. With me yet? I had someone _hide _my laptop, it has been _unbearably_ painful, but I'm back now! And I now have NO MORE EXAMS! :O So I shall write as often as Skyrim allows me. :3  
Without further ado: I hope you enjoy :)**

**Oh... and, please review? It really makes my stomach go all bubbly and happy ^_^**

**I DISCLAIM! S'not mine.**

* * *

_Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.  
_A pause.  
_Thud._

"Deidara, stop kicking the car," Naruto sighed wearily.

"I'll stop kicking when it starts working again, un," the blonde said waspishly, launching another at the ratty wheel.

"Nejiiiii," the driver whined at the stoic brunet who sat on the bonnet. Grey fumes, tinted purple in the sunlight, roiled over his body, sliding wraith-like over his folded arms. He looked like he was on fire.  
Blank expression fixed into the distant mountains, the Scot shrugged. "Ah dinnae ken whit tae doo."

"Lord of helpfulness over here," Naruto scowled at his friend.

Slightly further away, Gaara sat cross-legged on the slightly damn grass, pulling up green blades with a black expression. After helping the men push the smoking car into the lay by, Gaara had waited expectantly for a repair man to come, rule the car as completely dead and take them back home, allowing Gaara to go back to the bungalow, settle in a blanket outside and play with his cat.  
There was one thing standing in the way of this, and that was the signal. Or lack thereof.

"Ring Minato again," Deidara complained.

"I _can't_," Naruto retorted irritably. The other man shot him a dull one-eyed glare.

Deidara was having a nightmare. Stuck in a vast wasteland of grass and flowers, nothing but mountains in the distance, no signal, no food. And the hot guy was ignoring him.  
Deidara turned to appraise the silent redhead perched on the ground. Slim fingers plucked at the petals, ruthlessly pulling the heads off to scatter them in front of his lap. His head was bowed slightly, pale neck arched, and his iridescent eyes were rimmed by the charcoal black eyeliner. His brows were furrowed; face murderous, pale, plush lips downturned in a scowl. A freezing wind took that moment to skitter across the road, pulling a clutter of petals off the slender branches and depositing them all in Gaara's blood-coloured hair. Distractedly, the man brushed them off his eyelashes and lips and sent them on their way, but the majority clung on to the red strands. The blonde watched, jaw clenching slightly, as the other man's hand fluttered over the flawless skin, and, with an exasperated look, began to pull them out of his hair.

He stiffened as Deidara, approaching silently, pushed his seeking fingers out of the way and cheerily began to comb out the pink ovals.

Muttering a complaint, the man began to move away.

Gripping his shoulders and admiring the long fingernails on the cardigan that he so liked, Deidara shoved him back down again.

"You still have flowers in your hair babe, un," he said, sifting his hands through the red hair even though the petals were long gone. Fingertips revelling in the softness, Deidara pressed his stomach against Gaara's warm back, gently running fingers toward the nape of his neck.

The next second he was flat on his back, watching Gaara stumble behind Neji, bicep in the Scot's long-fingered hands.  
The brunet turned to Deidara. "Petals are all gain, Dei."

The blonde just pouted.

* * *

Heart a trifle too fast, Gaara sat back in the car again as Neji resumed his statue pose on the bonnet.

From his position in the backseat, he watched as Naruto joined the brunet and pulled him into his arms.  
"Ru-to," Neji muttered as he protested, trying to wiggle out, but Naruto tightened his hold and buried his face in the man's shoulder.

"Nej, I got no one to hug now that Sakura's left me!" The blonde man moaned as he rocked him.

"Ye bastard, gie off ye fool," Neji grumbled trying to unlace his fingers.

"You're a harsh man, Nej, you know that," Naruto widened his eyes and looked at him sorrowfully, "Do you not love me?"  
The smoke billowed around them, torn apart by the wind as it spiralled in convoluted curls around the two men. Gaara waited for an answer, but after a while it seemed there wasn't one coming.

"Sky's getting dark," Naruto mentioned, "Looks like the forecast was wrong…"

There was a brief silence, one that had a potential to stretch on for eons. A shrill whistle interrupted it before it could do so. There was a whoop from Naruto as he slammed the phone to his ear.  
"Hey Dad!"

There was a pause as Naruto listened. Gaara yanked at a thread on the seat. From over his head, a boom sounded, making him jerk a little. A pair of feet dangled in the window.

"Dei, dinnae joomp oan th' car. It isnae gonnae cope weel wi' a fife fit seven inch man oan it." Neji chastised the owner of the feet.

"Lighten up Haggis, un!"

"Ah'll gie yoo 'Haggis'," the Scot joked, clambering up the windscreen to join the blonde.

Deidara mimicked Neji's voice in shrill tones, "Dinnae sit on the carrrr, _Nej!_"

"Och, haud yer weesht."

"The fuck, man?" Deidara laughed.

"Ye heard me, divit."

"Means 'shut it'," Naruto supplied in a subdued voice.

"'Sup Naru, un?" Deidara asked, a hint of concern in his voice.

Gaara studied the man. Naruto looked like somebody had just died. Or worse, like there was no help coming.  
"Bad news guys."

Gaara nearly groaned aloud, but he held himself in check.  
"Whit's th' matter?" Neji asked.

Naruto stowed the phone in his pocket slowly. Lifting one arm, he rustled the back of his blond locks as he stared at the two men on the roof. Shrugging, he emitted a little sigh. "There's a storm coming."

"_Crivvens_!" The Scot above Gaara's head all but yelled, just as a loud creak was heard.

"OFF THE ROOF!" Naruto shouted as the frame of the battered Beatle folded in on itself. Gaara, eyes wide, flattened himself onto the chair, preparing to dive into the gap down the seats, but the collapsing ceiling was propped up by the low headrests of the seats.

"Gaara!" Neji's face was at the window. "Are ye'alricht?"

"M'fine," the redhead muttered emotionlessly, not pleased to be at the centre of attention. Neji wrenched at the handle, but the door was stuck tight in the weird shape of the car.

"_Dammit!" _Gaara heard Naruto snarl, "The bloody metal was corroded the whole way through. I am SUING the guy who sold this to Dad!"  
"Hauld techt, we'll fin' summet tae break th' glass wit," Neji assured him from the other side of the door. The faces of the three disappeared. There was the sound of the boot screeching part of the way open before grinding to a halt, and the trio rifled through the contents of it for a while.  
"Hang on Gaara, we're gonna go find a rock or something," Naruto called to him. The Sabaku grunted.

Gaara waited what felt like the longest minutes of forever. Feeling suddenly enclosed and caged in, he pressed his back against his seat and launched his feet at the glass. It wobbled, but when he did it a second time it rained down in little translucent shards. Gaara kicked out the last of the glass and turned awkwardly onto his front so he could wiggle out.

Finally on the gravel of the lay by, Gaara turned 360 degrees looking for the rest of his group. They were nowhere in sight. A shrill bird cry piped through the grey sky. He began to feel a little alone. Feeling a stinging on his right hand, he looked down to see he had almost shredded the palm. Sticking a cut index finger in his mouth, he traipsed a little away from the car; ignoring the pain. They had been driving on an incline for quite some time, and now the metal grating that had circled off the lay-by sunk into nothing, and the true height they'd come was apparent. The hill fell away beneath them, steeper on the right where they'd pushed the car. On the left, the fields remained horizontal for a ways, before they rolled into steep hillsides dotted with densely-furred cattle. A forest started on the right, beginning in sparse trees before they thickened into one green canopy. In the midst was a ruin of a castle.

Overhead, a crack of thunder resounded, and the American stared apprehensively at the blackening sky. Where were they? He scanned the empty road.

"_Gaara!"_

A small part of him wanted to slap his hands over his ears. Thrusting that part deep inside of him, the redhead searched for the owner of the voice.

"Down here!"

Following the instruction, Gaara shuffled to the edge and saw Deidara climbing the steep hillside with a large brick in his hands. He was by himself.

"You got out, un!"

The man on top of the hill nodded.

"Fantastic! I can drop this then, hn," Digging his heels into the earth, the blonde dropped the stone down and watch it roll. Unencumbered, he scaled the hill with ease.  
Reaching Gaara, his dark blue orb, pupil dilated in the dimming light, widened at the sight of the other's hand dripping blood.  
"Aw shit, un. Okay, let's wrap this…"

Deidara extracted a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped up as much of the blood as possible, grimacing a little, before he wound it tightly around the wounded hand. Gaara watched him silently, unnerved by all the touching that had been going on that day.

"Right," the man said when he'd finished, distastefully wiping a smear of blood on his trousers, "We've found a place to stay for the night, un."

The redhead couldn't help himself; "Where?"

The blonde stabbed a finger at the ruin of the castle. "There," he explained mournfully.

* * *

Gaara avoided Deidara's eye as he hurriedly tried to think of a way out of this. A castle in the rain, could you get any more gothic? There would be no good end to this. A shudder rippled through him involuntarily as his mind crowded with dark images.

"Sweetheart, un."

Deidara's arms were suddenly around his waist, hugging his body close to his own. Again, for the countless time that day, Gaara's body froze up in a cold terror. "Get off." He said, in a tiny, dark voice.

"Don't want you to fall, un."

Gaara felt a grin pressed against the nape of his neck; saw instead the shadow of his father bent over his back, beer bottle clenched in one clammy hand. "Get off," he snarled, twisting mercilessly in the blonde's grasp.

Deidara sighed and released him; thankful, Gaara moved speedily away, watching the other man warily.

Deidara scowled. "What's the matter, hot stuff, I'm not good enough for you?"

Gaara didn't respond.

"Come on then, Sabaku," the man said snarkily, indicating the slope, "We got a castle to get to, un."

The slope proved more perilous than Gaara had first thought, and twice Deidara caught his arm just as his legs gave out on an insubstantial patch of earth or a slippery patch of grass. The second time, he didn't let go.

"Shut it, un," he snapped when Gaara tried to rip his arm away, "or you really will die this time."

Through the forest, the pair were only reassured by the visible tips of the crumbling parapets of the castle occasionally peeking through the gaps in the thick canopy of branches. The temperature was dropping with the light, and Gaara shivered in his cardigan as they pressed urgently on. The monotony was almost numbing, each slender, needled pine passing with such similarity that the young Sabaku began to lose all sense of direction. Worry was gnawing lightly on his insides at spending a night in a forest with the blonde man. He cast a glance at him and noticed the long maroon thread from his afghan wrapped around a slender wrist – rolling his eyes at the ridiculousness of it.

Deidara turned to look at him just as he turned away; mistaking his contempt for anxiety, he attempted to reassure him by estimating that they were 'nearly there'.

They carried on for a ways, progress hindered by a thick green tanglevine that had crawled out of nowhere and strangled their calves as they waded through it. Gaara was pulling his leg out of a clump he had stumbled into when the first cold splash landed on his nose. He looked up, a little fearful.

The whole trek, the redhead had spoken as little as possible, but now he cracked open his dry lips to speak. "Deidara?"

The blonde looked up, startled blue eyes meeting the green ones of his companion.

"Yeah, un?"

"S'raining," Gaara muttered, as the patter of wet drops sounded on the branches above their heads.

Deidara lifted his head, face thoughtful. "Shit…" The thundering increased, the pair suddenly sluiced with the icy deluge. "Shit!" He grabbed for the redhead's wrist and they both ran through the dampening earth with an urgency bordering on frightful.

Before long Gaara's breath was coming in heaves, his vision blurred by rain water and eyeliner. The rain hammering on his head rang in his ears and filled his hearing with a buzz of noise. Through it, he barely heard Deidara's third 'shit!'.

Blinded, he banged into something and unbalanced. As if in a nightmare, he was falling through the air, skidding and tumbling through cloying mud and wet earth, before he landed with a wet splosh in something freezing cold. He tried to breathe, to stop the spinning in his head, but he sucked in a lungful of water; spluttering, he opened his eyes to have them stinging and blind.

Realisation snapped at the same moment survival instinct kicked in and, with a kick, Gaara's head broke the surface of the water. It was hard to swim in his heavy clothes, and tired as he was, it took all his strength to keep his head in the air. Wearily, he lurched for the bank in doggy paddle, and for the first time willingly reached for Deidara's hand as the blonde lay flattened on his stomach, arm out-stretched and face worried. Pulling Gaara up almost resulted in Deidara falling in, but eventually he had them both on the bank on their feet.

Gaara couldn't stop shivering. They racked his body and made his organs feel like broken ice in a washing machine. Deidara had an arm slung around the younger man as he half dragged him away from the large pond to the open entrance of a large stone doorway.

"HEY!" He yelled hoarsely, "Hey, OII!"

There was no answer from inside, but further back into the dark recesses of the castle, an orange light flickered.

"Bastards, un", Deidara muttered to himself, before raising his voice to a scream, "Hey, FUCKERS!"

"Deidara?" Naruto's distant voice called.

"Who do you think, you almighty prick, un," the blonde snarled back as a blonde head bobbed into view.

"Thank fuck, we were so- GAARA?"

"He fell in the pond," Deidara explained, short of breath, as he allowed Naruto to take the majority of the shorter man's weight.

"Fuck..." the other blonde said slowly as he carried the guy in. "Poor dude, everything bad's happening to him! Crushed in a car, fell in a pond, stuck with Deidara."

"Twat," the man responded with no real anger.

Naruto half dragged the limp man further into the shaded recesses of the crumbling building, allowing Deidara to gradually get his breath back.

"Naruto, whit haeve ye go' thaur?" Neji asked, approaching slowly from the fire.

Deidara appraised the other man sharply, throwing his head a little back like a startled horse, calculating blue eye probing the brunet as the man remained oblivious, hooded gaze centred dully on the blonde next to him.

"Gaara?" The Scot exclaimed, and Deidara's hackles settled restlessly as the impenetrable black expression fell off the other man's face. Neji hurried forwards, strong pale arms hastening to take his friend from the blonde, careful not to let his skin touch Naruto's. Taking the last few steps, he lowered the redhead down near to the fire and threw blankets over him.

"Deidara," the brunet muttered sourly, glaring at the pony-tailed man in merciless askance.

"Do not give me that look, un. Do you even know how unpredictable the weather is in your goddamn country?" He retorted irritably, moving to sit cross-legged on the other side of the Sabaku. He extended a hand and brushed the blood red hair, hanging in short, sopping rattails, off the smaller man's forehead.

Neji stared at his hand, but his gaze was unfocused, as if his mind was in another place. Inscrutable, the blonde watched the brunet's features pinch together, as if in pain, as his eyes fogged and their dove grey irises darkened like the sky outside; his face returning to the black mask of before.

Deidara dared not ask. He instead wiped a bead of water running down the cream cheek of his soaking companion and fondly thought of a time when he would see Gaara's slick body writhing underneath him.

* * *

Gaara cracked open his eyes with a muffled whimper. His vision swam before him a little as he slowly registered his abnormal body heat. His back was lanced with warmth from an unspecified source, yet his stomach was distinctly chilled in comparison, and his toes felt like they'd spent the night in a bucket of ice. Biting his lips to control the grumbles he wanted to emit, he executed a neat little roll over to press his cool stomach against the pool of heat.

Instead of a radiator, he found himself chest to chest with Neji Hyuuga.

Neji, disturbed by his movement, muttered a barely audible Scottish curse and shifted closer in to the smaller man, his flannel tee-shirt grazing over Gaara exposed nipples.

The redhead barely contained his scream as he realised his semi-nakedness and proximity to the man; the man who, at that moment, unconsciously slid a long-fingered hand over his bare stomach to curl around his waist. Small warm trails followed the fingers over his hips and pooled in gentle warmth where they rested nonchalantly at the small of his back.

Gaara's heart thrummed like a trapped bird's as he considered kicking the other man between the legs to get free. Instead, he watched with dull fascination as the brunet's dark brow furrowed in anguish, curving over his shuttered eyes. A shallow breath escaped his down-turned lips, and even that insubstantial noise had a Scottish ring to it. The scowl lasted for perhaps another few seconds before it dissipated like mist in a gale. Neji drew back his hand to rub it against his face, and Gaara shot out from the blanket they shared like a burst of machinegun fire.

The instant he was out, the redhead released a pained gasp, and nearly dived back in next to the taller man. Instead he blundered on frozen feet to where his long-sleeved grey jumper and burgundy afghan lay draped over a hunk of grey rock near to the fire. He pulled them on with such haste that twice he pulled on the shirt wrong, and when he finally wrapped his cardigan around him with a shiver it was with overwhelming relief that he surrendered to its woolly warmth. His toes he could do little about; with painful leverage he climbed awkwardly up a wall curved and flecked by the erosion of time to sit on the worn perch.

They were in the heart of the castle, clustered under what was once a huge stone stairway. Now it was only barely held up by huge chunks of rock which might have once been pillars. Around them the walls still stood, but great gaps in the huge bricks had allowed rain and wind to gust in, and the floor was a carpet of yellow grass and dark green moss. The fire in the centre of their camp had burned down to embers, faintly illuminating the hewn rock under them, speckled with moss and mildew until it looked like scabbing skin.

Above them a fine mist drifted into the roofless castle, barely noticeable save for when the glowing embers highlighted the tiny droplets just out of their cover.

A chill wind stirred the blankets of the sleeping trio, and Gaara shuddered violently as it whipped up the hem of his cardigan.

The blondes slept on, but Neji, his body heat dropping as the wind made the loss of his companion blaringly obvious, stirred and fluttered open pale eyes. He turned his head blearily, ran his short nails over a faint compression in the blanket next to him and looked around at the two sleeping men. His eyes skidded over Deidara's prone form quickly, but his gaze held over Naruto's bulkier body obscured under the blanket, and his eyes lidded for a brief moment.

It was then that he realised who was missing, and he turned to scan for the fourth male. Swivelling as far as he was willing in the blankets, he spotted the redhead perched stiffly on a high outcrop of wall, toes gingerly tucked under his legs, watching him with an inscrutable expression like a sentinel of the night. His left side was coated almost in inky blackness, the light from the dying fire providing the only illumination to his face. The firelight made his eyes seem set back, swirling black pools in his face, orange gleaming in his blood-coloured hair and making it dance like flames itself.

"Whit," Neji mumbled, his morning voice a little croaky, "are ye daeing sittin' oan that rock?"

"Waiting for sun-up," Gaara muttered hoarsely.

Neji paused, trying to order his thoughts from sleep. "Are ye nae coold?"

"Yes, I'm cold."

Neji ignored the faint sarcasm. "Weel, come doown, ye divit."

The redhead diverted his gaze, staring into the puttering embers.

The brunet groaned, thoroughly unwilling to get out of the slight warmth he had accumulated in his pouch of the blanket overnight. "Gaara, ye gie tha' 'Merican erse doown haur richt noo, or soo help me God, Ah wi' gie it doown meself."

When the hunched man didn't even look his way, Neji swore colourfully and darted out of the blanket faster than Gaara had even seen him move before. The Scot was so tall he barely had to reach up on his toes to roughly grab the other man around the middle and heave him with strength his lithe form didn't appear it could possess. The brunet dropped him heavily on the blankets and thankfully buried himself under the mound he had created. Gaara sat where he had been dropped, tailbone throbbing a little from his impact on the stone, his spine as stiff as a rigid steel pole. Fingers appeared at the edge of the blanket, out of which peeped small stray strands of dark brown hair. They tugged the blanket away to reveal Neji's pale eyes, which were gazing balefully at him.

"Lie. Doown."

Gaara's red eyebrows plummeted over his thickly lashed eyes. He fixed his death glare on the man next to him.

"Och noo Gaara. Lie doown. Noow."

The man looked set to push him down if he refused, so reluctantly Gaara settled back into the cold place he'd left. Neji threw the edge of the blanket over him and burrowed his face into the makeshift pillow he'd made out of his grey hoodie with a contented grunt. Stiffly, Gaara waited until a surprisingly short amount of time later, when the Scot's breathed had evened out into soft, steady breaths. Tentatively, so as not to wake the other man, Gaara turned on his side so his back was facing the Scotsman and wiggled till he felt the heat on his back. He gathered the edge of his blanket, tucked it under his chin and waited to see if sleep took him.

In the end he stayed awake until the first cracks of dawn marbled the sky; warm, if not slightly damp from the mist that occasionally filtered in with a flurry of wind. Watching the sky lighten into the watercolour hues of morning, he heard faint rustles coming from the two previously unmoving figures, and as they began to wake he felt shifts of the blanket that signified Neji's movement.

"Oh my God…" Naruto croaked thickly, sticking his slacken face out from under his pile of blankets, golden hair tousled and messy from sleep. "I have never slept so badly."

"You slept like a log, un." Deidara rebuked, his morning voice not as rough as Naruto's. His voice could almost have been classed as cheery, but his next sentence found the tone low and dangerous and barbed.

"Oh my _God_ Neji."

Gaara remained prone under the blanket as Neji turned his head to look over his inanimate body.

"Aye?"

Deidara's voice was nearly a snarl. "I had first claim on the hot guy!"

Neji slumped back in his covers. "Dei, it's tae early fe' this."

"Did you sleep with him?" The blonde shrieked.

"Nae," Neji snapped back, irritated, "noo stop yer yacking."

What was going on? His insides suddenly cold, Gaara wished he could wake up and find that all of this was some elaborate nightmare. His life was ordered until he came to Scotland. His life had routine. The evil scary man of his twisted dreams was safely behind bars in a padded room and he was free to do as he liked. In his old life he never felt so stripped back as he did now. He was in a castle. In Scotland. With three of the kind of men Temari had on her annual calendars. Sharing a bed with one and fighting off the advances of another. Another chill shiver shuddered through the redhead as the strangeness of the situation made itself known to him with Neji's fingertips accidentally brushing across his clothed thigh as he settled again. Burrowing his face into the blanket, he stifled his agonised whimper.

Sullen muttering from the ring of rocks in the middle of their sleeping places alerted them to Deidara's actions; clunks as he piled more wood that had been collected the day before onto the fire preceded the familiar schww of a match on stone, and the hiss of fire filled the air. There was a throaty grunt as Naruto heaved himself up and Gaara watched him hobble to the small gathering of flames. Neji saw fit to join them shortly after and, reluctantly, the Sabaku did too. He settled on the other side of the small fire to the others, watching them surreptitiously as he drew the thick blanket tightly over his shoulders.

None of them spoke for a while; each testing out which limb they'd slept funnily on. Gaara ached a little in his thighs where he'd crouched on the perch of rock which loomed over their squatting positions. It was just as Gaara sought it out with his eyes that he involuntarily looked at Neji.

Deidara was oblivious on his other side, busily tending the flame while he sneaked glances at the redhead opposite, Naruto had buried his face in a bundle of cloth, and Neji was using that opportunity to stare at the blonde.

Gaara tried to look, rather than see, yet he could not stop himself from noticing the way Neji's eyes trailed the toned arms under their sleeves, flickered down the line of Naruto's neck and lingered on the birth-marked cheek that wasn't covered by the blanket as the blonde dozed. But he also saw how Neji's eyes were hooded and dark, some concealed emotion narrowing the usually mellow Scot's eyes into unreadable lines as he drank in the man next to him.

Gaara's heart plummeted with the velocity and power of a nose-diving aeroplane. He saw, in that momentary flash of gold in the man's pale eyes, the breadth of Neji's feelings for his friend, and it felt like a serrated knife had cut a small piece of the pounding organ in his chest and pushed it into his stomach to digest slowly in the acids there. Naruto used that moment to unconsciously stretch, his muscles rippling over his back under the shirt as he turned to look Neji in the eye. Like blank sheet had fallen over the Scot's face, he stared impassively at the blonde next to him.

"Yes, Neji?" Naruto asked quizzically.

"It's aw coz ay ye 'at we're in thes mess, stone heid," the brunet frowned, his cover-up convincing even to Gaara's eyes.

Naruto dropped his arms and assumed a hurt expression. "You cut me deep Nej."

"Ye cut me deeper," the other man muttered fleetingly.

"Huh?" Naruto asked, scooting next the man in order to hear clearer.

"If yer nae listenin' th' first time, then ah'm nae repeatin' it, clootie lugs."

"What," Deidara leaned into the men's conversation, "is a clootie lug, un?"

"I believe the direct translation is 'cloth ears'" Naruto explained mildly.

There was a pause as, upon being prompted by the other blonde, Naruto dug for a substantial amount of time in his left trouser pocket for his mobile. His face screwed up as the time stretched on, until he gave up in defeat and slumped back into the folds of the blanket.

"Naruto," Deidara pinched his index finger and thumb on the bridge of his nose, "Where is your phone?"

The blonde gave a rolling shrug.

Face enraged, Deidara launched himself over Neji to grab at the neck of Naruto's tee and shake it viciously. "Find it, Naruto, un. Find it now."

"Gerroff." The half-awake man feebly batted away his assaulter.

"Naaaaaa-rrrrru-tooooooooo…." Deidara snarled dangerously.

The attack halted suddenly as a muffled buzz sounded from the midst of the scuffle. Deidara wiggled urgently down the other blonde to grab at the hem of his crop trousers, where a rectangular shape was visible.

"Oh yeah," said Naruto lightly, "I forgot these trousers have a hole in their pockets."

Deidara barely just restrained himself from shaking the other man again, instead laying his arm the length of the trousers from his shoulder. His fingers were just short of the pocket.

"Arm not long enough," he stated cheerily, "Neji, stick your hands down this prick's trousers and fish that out for me would you, un?"

Neji visibly turned an ash grey. "Why?"

"Because your arms are longer, obviously," Deidara explained slowly, as if talking to an idiot. The Scot scowled at him, gingerly bum-shuffling towards the tanned blonde. Naruto wiggled his eyebrows at the brunet. "Oo-ey Nej."

"Yoo," Neji growled, "Haud yer weesht, or ah'll rip aht yer tongue."

"Oo, violent this morning," the other man said grumpily.

Neji didn't reply, instead moving as fast as he had last night when he'd uprooted Gaara from his perch, thrusting his entire arm hilt deep down the trouser leg and withdrawing just as quickly. In his palm he clutched Naruto's orange touch screen Samsung.

Completely unperturbed, Naruto swiped the phone and tabbed in the code. "Message from Dad!" He screamed gleefully, prompting Deidara to nearly fall in his lap in his haste to read it.

"Sent five minutes ago: 'found the car. Waiting by it now, where are you?'" Naruto read aloud for the others' benefit. A warm gush of relief filled Gaara's empty stomach.

"'Bout fucking time," the blonde man muttered, rearranging his scruffy ponytail. Naruto grinned.

"Let's pack up guys!"

Blankets hurriedly bundled together, stuffed under t-shirts and carried in arms, the group trudged out of the castle. The mist-rain had let up when the weak sun rays had begun to filter into the roofless place, the unaccustomed light revealing the deep jagged oval pool next to the ruins, gouges in the wet mud evident of Gaara and Deidara's trek the night before. The redhead made sure to skirt well around the perilous bank.

The mad dash through the forest on the pair's part last night had blurred into one mass in Gaara's mind, and it seemed an age before they finally emerged at the steep hill leading to the car, by which time the sky was darkening once again.

"Hey!" Naruto called up the hill, and was greeted by a sunshine-bright head sticking over the railing.

"Oh thank God," Minato called down to the haggard group, "Temari was just threatening to strangle me with my own intestines."

"Nice to see you too," Naruto grumbled as they began the ascent, each making sure to look out for the smallest in their midst, whose breathing was becoming ragged.

Gaara's chest burned as he finally reached the crest of the hill, and he had to lean heavily on the railings as Minato worriedly fluttered a hand over his back. To his surprise, his siblings weren't there, but Minato wordlessly handed him a phone, looking in no hurry to be accepting it back.

The line was crackly when Gaara tried to assure Temari he was fine, and by the seventh attempt she had somewhat got it. He hung up when she tried to pose another question and silently passed the small device back to its owner.

"Well?" muttered Minato, "Do I still risk death by self-strangulation?"

Gaara shook his head, too tired to even think about managing a smile. Numbly he got into the car and folded himself into a ball against the door, staring sightlessly out of the window as the others followed suit. Minato ignored the ruined Beatle stonily in favour of the Ford Gaara recognised that his siblings had taken. Deidara flung a quick kick at the thin tyre as he passed.

The grey-toned fields flashed past as a rain cloud once again obscured the sky; swollen stomach hanging ominously over the Ford as it barely stayed ahead of the lines descending from it, indicating the sheeting rain miles behind them. It quickly caught up with them, and Gaara allowed the drumming of the rain to lull him into a waking daze. The miles passed in no time, and soon they were pulling up outside Minato's house, which hunched with its back to the rain like a Highland pony. They were ushered hurriedly inside, a disembodied arm guiding Gaara through the door, where he was attacked by something shrill and tall and blonde.

"Temar-" He grumbled through a mouthful of blonde pigtail, before she released him and turned her onslaught on the blonde man behind him. Deidara scooted out of the way of her rage, ducking into the shadow of the staircase next to him as if trying to hide his hair colour. The enraged woman launched a kick at Naruto, catching him in the gut and knocking the air out of him as he was backed helplessly against the bookcase. "YOU," she hissed, jabbing the sharpened nail of her index finger at him so viciously the bloke started to look fearful for the insides of his nostrils, "YOU."

There was a pause as Temari seemed speechless, swelling like an outraged bullfrog as she searched for the right expletive.

Naruto put his hands in the air as if to surrender. "I am completely at fault," he agreed.

"OF BLOODY COURSE YOU ARE!" Temari bellowed furiously, "YOU. Dragging MY BROTHER on some, some…" Her face was quickly becoming pallid with rage, "some ARSEHOLE CAMPING EXPERIENCE, YOU DICK!"

"Hey now." The little annoyance that had been present in the man's face quickly dribbled out as Temari's ashen face skipped a few degrees down, her eyes black, malevolent pools in her drawn face. "Techically it wasn't…" He continued bravely, "on… purpose…"

"It was mainly my fault," Minato interjected in a small face, wide eyes drinking in the way his son was entirely at the woman's mercy. Temari's face turned jerkily, as if on un-oiled hinges, to glare pure cold murder at the elder blonde.

"You," she hissed, in a voice colder than an Antarctic wind, "will be dealt with shortly."

Minato turned green.

There was a long, horrid pause as Temari again tried to find words to sum up her wrath. Finally, she drew her pale face close to Naruto's tan one and spat her final words like a snake would poison.

"One word Sunshine. Castration."

And with that threat hanging like a big fat spider in the air, she grabbed Gaara's wrist, beckoned Kankuro and exited Minato's house, leaving the four men standing like granite statues in her wake.

Just as they tried to unfreeze themselves from the Sabaku's chilling words, she stuck her head through the door again, blonde pigtails already wet from the downpour. "Minato, I swear you're getting the hire-car review from hell." Wearing a scowl that wouldn't look out of place on an avenging angel, she slammed the door behind her.

* * *

**I want ScottishNeji, wearing a little bow, in a box with my exam results pleaaaaase ^3^**


	6. Chapter 6

**I know. IknowIknow. The actual interaction of Gaara and Neji seems to be going nowhere. I swear, I have my chapter timeline spread before me, and there DEFINITELY WILL BE SOME COMING UP. Bear with me for a little longer, there's just some background that needs to be cleared up. Chapter 8. For sure.**

Okay, and I was super sad when I got no reviews for the last one, but that's okay! I will continue writing anyway, just because I'm enjoying it ^_^ But I tell ya, I am SO psyched for Chapter 8 (7 will be a shortish one), I got it all planned and everything! I've got an outline up to chap 10, and I'm thinking there will be thirteen in total, fingers crossed.

**So anyway. I hope you enjoy this. I'm gonna put the rating up, because it's... ah, a little bit gruesome. :(**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.**

* * *

27th April, 2012, read the little numbers on the small calendar hanging next to the rarely used Agar in the kitchen. As if trying to argue, the neatly printed numbers read '17/04/12' in the centre of the A4 brown envelope that nestled in between the empty fruitbowl and the stack of coasters on the dining room table; the envelope that Temari, Kankuro and Gaara were appraising with quick, furtive glances.

They were well into their third week of their holiday; two weeks and five days exactly. It had been a week and five days since the hitch with the car, and the subsequent overnight stay in that decrepit shell of a castle. Temari had finally cooled down about the impromptu camping trip and was on speaking terms with Naruto again. Of course, she'd never been angry at Neji – he was the only one she would speak to, in between casting evil looks like a rabid canine at the blonde man. The days had been spent in The Lion's Hart, playing Monopoly and demanding Neji bring them free drinks, unlimited food and just generally be their slave. The afternoons would see them lounging in the spiky grass and wild flowers outside 'Billy's Happy Moturs' praising Minato on his new purchase of a battered and rusty Vintage Vespa – or perching on the stone wall outside the shop of Hiashi Hyuuga, who would come out in his overall, arms covered in flour the same shade as his and Neji's eyes, bearing the 'throwouts' of the batches of cookies he made. Or else, when the weather fared too bad to venture into, many afternoons were spent sprawled across the living room of the Sabakus' rented house, watching films and eating toffee popcorn and sweets by the bowlful. The majority of the time the 'natives', as they had fondly labelled themselves, would be invited or invite themselves over, and they would bring peace offerings in the form of an inexhaustible array of DVDs. Gaara would spent the afternoon moving from sofa to beanbag to floor, all in aid of escaping Deidara's suggestive and rather unsubtle touches. Naruto and Kankuro would dominate a sofa to themselves, laughing loudly and positively roaring when they found more mutual interests they shared. Occasionally Neji would sit with them, or he would share a sofa with Gaara and Temari.  
It had been the two days previously, on the Wednesday, when the sky was frosted pearl gray like a roof of cobwebs spun so tightly there were no gaps visible. No rain was forecasted, but the day was still overcast and sunless. The Sabakus had pooled their supplies of food and pushed in a RomCom DVD – it was Temari's turn, when there came a triple knock, and two sharp raps.

Temari rolled her head over to Kankuro. "Did you just text Naruto?"

"Mighta done," Kankuro eyes crinkled as he cast her a wide smile. "I said he could bring whoever as well."

"Then you're getting the door," Temari sighed in defeat.

"FACE it Temar, you're burning to see Neji." Kankuro's smug tone called from the hallway. His sister flushed slightly as she chose to ignore his comment. The group came in shortly after, everyone accounted for except Hinata, who only came occasionally. Kankuro and Naruto snagged their sofa, and Neji – who had entered before the long-haired blond, sat down opposite to Gaara, nodding a hello to him.

"NEJI! UN!" The blonde roared as he attempted to leap in between them. The brunet casually stretched out his legs in a seemingly unconscious movement, throwing a quizzical look at Deidara when the other man's face flushed in anger.

"Dei, sit down," Temari grumbled, pulling him to the floor in between the two men on the sofa and thrusting a couple of Haribos into his mouth. He chewed them resentfully, glaring at the long-haired man sprawled across the cushions.

At some point halfway through the film, Gaara stretched his legs, feeling cramp seizing at one of his hamstrings and wincing a little as the muscle pulled. Completely by accident, he came into contact with the other man's calf. Their eyes met for a split second before Gaara snapped his gaze away, his face mercifully impassive, staring fixedly at the screen like it was honestly the most fascinating thing he had ever seen. And then Neji's feet had crept closer and pushed against the redhead's, just the toes. Despite himself, Gaara's eyes had flashed in shock to the long-haired Scot, but he too was watching the screen. They remained like that, legs bent, toes partially touching, for the remainder of the film – and for the life of him, Gaara couldn't remember what it was about.

There were only nine days left of the holiday, a stark and unforgiving fact that hollowed the redhead's stomach out and made his insides ache in an unfamiliar pain. And then, along with a glimpse of May promise in watery sun over the yellow bracken of the Highlands behind the cottage, came the letter. Emblazoned with the ugly blue triangle of the Yale-New Haven Psychiatric Hospital, they received one nearly every six months. It had been once described to them that the regularity 'helped to soothe the patient's' mind. Gaara was sure it was just to gloat.

He was also certain that there was no limit, and if there was then it was a flexible one, on the amount of paper used. Yet he knew that within that A4 envelope were two thin pieces of fresh white paper, either typed or written depending on the patient's mood – one addressed to Temari, one addressed to Kankuro; and both would be signed with languid sprawling letters '_your loving father_'.

He felt the anger surging up from the pit of his throat.

"So..?" Temari's attempt to control her voice bordered on heroic, even if it did crack painfully noticeably. Looking anywhere but her dark eyes, Gaara slid off his chair and slunk away from the table. "Gaara!" Temari called after him reproachfully.

"Open it," Gaara responded, voice curiously bland, "I'm going back to watch the movie."

Disappearing from sight as quickly as possible, the Sabaku allowed a shudder to move through him like the excruciating ripple through cold tar. Hastily, he returned to his seat on the sofa, the pillows bunched around him, and hit play on the remote. Robert Downey Junior returned to life on the screen, casually leaving behind his unflattering frozen position with his mouth partially agape in favour of his bright eyed, unshaven portrayal of Sherlock Holmes – an idea that Gaara had decided had made him love the English a little bit more.

"Are you… familiar with the study of Graphology?" came the liltingly gruff voice from the TV.

"I've… never given it any serious thought, no," the other responded in kind. Gaara found himself detachedly fascinated by Moriarty, if only by the way his voice was imbued with tenors of plotting and villainy. The redhead wondered how he did it; how he could look so normal and well-kept and speak like a well-oiled snake.

"The psychological analysis of… handwriting," Sherlock replied with a self-satisfied half-smile and heel spin towards his rival. Gaara shifted a little uncomfortably, eyes still drawn to the screen.

"The upward strokes on the p, the j, the m indicate a genius level intellect," the camera flashed to Moriarty, who wore a self-indulgent smile, before it darted back to Holmes, "While the flourishes on the lower zone denote a hightly creative yet meticulous nature." Gaara's hackles settled marginally. The actor's jaw worked a little, hardening until the next words came through fractionally gritted teeth in a gravelly London accent. "_But_, if one observes the overall _slant_ and pressure of the writing there's a suggestion of acute narcissism-" here the words became even harsher, "- a complete lack of empathy, and a pronounced inclination towards" – "NO," Moriarty interjected loudly, but Holmes' voice overrode his – "_moral insanity."_

The film flickered to a halt on the actor's accusing expression as Gaara stared emotionlessly at the screen. Deciding that he, in fact, no longer felt like watching tv, he laid the remote with exaggerated care on the arm of the sofa, slipped off the plush pillows and padded with a forced calm out of the room.  
Making his mind up to step outside, he passed the kitchen, where the low, agitated buzz of his siblings voices sounded like a disturbed bees hive. He flicked a quick, involuntary look into the room as he passed, but the pair had blonde and brunet hair alike turned away from him, and he hastened past with no interaction. Once outside, on the still slightly damp porch, Gaara leapt lightly onto the wooden railing and dangled his legs over, tapping the toes of his sandals together and trying to think positively. He felt less claustrophobic now he was out of the house; as if the walls had made the air stifling and impossible to breathe. Now the yellow grass encrusted with heather was splayed before him in all its bleak splendour. A mewl from behind him helped to finally lift his mood into pleasantness, and he leaned back, clutching the rail with one hand to keep himself from falling, and scooped the protesting kitten from where she'd snuck out behind him.

He placed Boxie on his lap, where she curled contentedly and made shrill peeping sounds at her owner, who interpreted them to mean she wanted a tummy rub. He indulged with an infinite measure of patience that still surprised him weeks after he first discovered the small creature. Under his care she had now filled out from the skinny mite she had been when he found her; her limbs elongated in growth and her coat sleeker from Gaara's attentions.

He petted her absent-mindedly as his thoughts drifted, back to the to the first time he'd seen that upside down blue triangle – composed of two blunt-ended smaller triangles and a long bar. The logo should have been prettier than it was, and perhaps it might be to other people, but to him the triangle represented horror; the kind that was hidden away in a locked box, never to opened. They'd travelled from one end of America to the other, by plane and by car both, from western San Francisco to eastern Connecticut. Gaara was exhausted, mentally and physically, by the time they arrived, exactly three weeks after his fourteenth birthday.

* * *

10th February 2007: 14 Years Old

Gaara looked bleakly across the meticulous entrance to the institute, absorbing the bushes cropped close to the leaves like a prisoner's stubble and sweeping across the wide pathway of pale stone leading to the large windowed doors of the entrance. The place was sectioned into blocks, starting small and eagerly clustering around the entrance like over-zealous employees. After these they grew in size, until they reached their peak behind the entrance block – where an imposing building bulged over the almost cheerful plaza like the caving side of a volcano preparing to burst forth its molten content and obscure the entire hospital in wreaths of noxious smoke. The buildings at the fore were garbed in pleasing creams and whites, but the mother building seemed more like an off grey, like old rags or cigarette smoke. He realised he'd paused when he felt a light hand on his back – not even bothering to move away, he rotated his head like an owl and Temari snatched her hand away like it was an unfed lion she was touching, and not her brother.

"We're going in now Gaar," she said weakly, "come on."

The two other Sabakus walked a little ahead of their younger brother and only flicked the occasional cursory glance over their shoulders to make sure he was still following. Wondering what they were seeing, he looked at his reflection in one of the windows of the blocks, and lifeless green eyes in their pockets of black glared, baleful and glazed, back at him. Gaara felt no satisfaction at his appearance. He felt nothing at all. He felt as though he were on another plane of existence to everyone else, one were emotions didn't matter, caring didn't matter. All that existed was survival. That was what Gaara did. He survived.

Temari's small heels were staccato on the smooth pale stone, next to Kankuro's muffled thwumphs of his softer soles. Gaara on the other hand, moved with barely a whisper to announce his presence; the worn soles of his grey sneakers emitting the slightest hiss of shoe on stone. At home, when he was by himself, he liked to walk with more force than normal, as if his ringing footsteps would make people look at him, love him. But here he struggled to be as silent as possible, as if to move like a shadow, a wraith. A ninja.

The trio slipped into the frigid cool of the reception, the bite of the wind outside suddenly like a warm embrace compared to the chill of the entrance.

Slipping a well-used smile onto her face, Temari approached the desk and drummed her fingers on the enamel surface. The receptionist, with a drawn face, gave her a sour look and she subsided, although her smile remained as if painted on.

"We're here to see… our, ah, father," she explained weakly, giving the woman a watery version of the smile that had just slipped.

"I see," the woman said nasally, "and your name..?"

"Ah – Sabaku." Temari offered, and lapsed into silence. The patter of keys briefly filled it.

"Yes, I have you here, for your first appointment at 2:30. Sabaku. Ward A…" The woman's waxed eyebrows flew up a ways, but she recovered quickly and they sank back down, before she quirked the left; a conscious effort this time. "You're early." Three sets of eyes flickered to the analogue clock on the wall, the hands of which read 1:45.

"Yes, well," Temari shrugged, "It was be late or be early."

The woman merely responded with a 'hmm' and indicated the beige cushioned chairs against the wall a way away from the desk. The Sabaku siblings trudged over and settled awkwardly on them, none making a sound to each other.

Gaara blankly surveyed the room they were in. It was large in height – almost more so than it was in width – and had floor to ceiling glass panels around the door, which merged into wall on either side. The reception desk faced the transparent wall. The floor was slick and a kind of cappuccino brown, matching the chairs, and the walls faded into a mellow peach colour. There were paintings scattered around the walls; some nice-looking and others that looked like children had been commissioned to make them. The effect was a pleasant one, and the place might have been quite enjoyable to be in if it weren't for the lingering smell of anaesthetic and over-clean hallways that permeated the air-conditioned interior. The smell of hospitals. Gaara wrinkled his nose; he avoided going to them. They were bad news.

They waited in a prickling silence as the hands of the clock dragged themselves around, and when, finally, they reached 2:15, a short man in a white coat hurried down the stair case peeking out of the corner of the room and called 'the Sabakus?' in their general direction.

Temari stood and surreptitiously wiped her clammy hands on her skirt, before she offered one to the man. "Temari," she greeted him.

The man gave her a distracted smile and took the proffered hand, "Dr. Norson."

He ignored the two men still seated by Temari in favour of flipping through the sheets of paper on his clipboard.

"Sabaku, Sabaku… Yes, here we go – Relationship: Father, Ward A, Kazekage Aisle, fourth room." He looked up expectantly, waiting for any enquiries. When there were none, he preceded, "Okay, well, there will be some…difficulty… in this patient meeting." Almost imperceptibly, his eyes flickered over Gaara's expressionless face. "So we will be in the D Room in Ward A." He let out a flat-toned whistle through his teeth – the only betrayal of anxiety. "So with that in mind, please follow me."

Gaara's throat immediately constricted into a small tight tube that reduced all air to his lungs. Standing numbly, his limbs encased in what felt like physical terror that hobbled him and rendered fleeing impossible, he followed his siblings. Instead of walking ahead, they regulated their steps so that they were close to the youngest, ready to spur him on should he resist.

Together, as a tight unit, they traversed the winding corridors, diving left and right at cross junctions and up and down stairs, where if it were possible, the raw smell of clean was even more prominent. Blue signs flashed past at intervals, counting down alphabetically; they were hurrying past 'C', and then 'B' until they arrived at the door that announced 'Ward A'.

The doctor tabbed a code into the silver keypad next to the doors, and a white light flashed at the top. Hardly breaking stride, the doctor pushed through them and the Sabakus hastened to follow. They had hardly gone down the corridor at all before the short doctor waved a hand to them, and they made a sharp right turn, which ended in a blank-walled dead end with a single door in front of them. An unassuming engraved sign read 'D Room'. Gaara's heart was beating triple time in his chest; a sickening thunder like a terrified stampede of some huge, unnamed beast.

The doctor looked up at their ashen faces just then. "Oh no," he reassured them, "This is not your father's room. Kazekage Aisle is much further down. This is our, ah… Meeting room."

The three visibly relaxed. The doctor eyed them inquisitively, particularly the smallest, whose stricken expression had faded back into a curiously dead-eyed face. He opened the door and motioned for them to enter. They did so, only to stop in the doorway at the sight of the interior. It was a no-holding-back room, split into two separated 'mini rooms' by heavy-duty white bars. They allowed the visitors the most room, nearly a square, whereas the other side was a sliver of a rectangle. Each of the three small windows dispersed around the walls were similarly barred. It was sparsely decorated too, a small cluster of chairs in the visiting section and just a single one in the patient's side. This chair, however, was an imposing, uncomfortable-looking specimen, with straps dangling ominously from the arms and legs.

There were bodyguards in the room already, two flanking the horseshoe of chairs in the section they'd walked into, and three in the small other side, making it seem very cramped. And, the Sabakus noted, there was no attempt made to hide the cameras, which hung in the corners of the room like fat, white spiders, watching every going on. Prompted by Doctor Norson clearing his throat, they walked fully into the room and sat on the chairs provided. The doctor walked in front of them, preparing to address them, and cleared his throat once more.

"Now, the hospital was not originally… prepared to allow you," he indicated the redhead, "To see your father considering, ah, the reason he is in here in the first place. However," he continued, face drawn, "we feel it is necessary for the help of our work to see… how he reacts to you. It would help us in our prognosis of him, and, if it turns out his mental health is stable, we even more solid conviction with which to accuse him with. Do you understand?"

The blonde and the brunet nodded, but the redhead stayed with his face tilted down, hands clasped on his lap, his face the colour of curdled milk. "Wait here," the doctor told them, distractedly flicking through his clipboard again – why he had to be dealing with a Ward A patient today was beyond his knowledge. He did not like dabbling in this ward. They were all too… different.

He shut the door behind him as he left, and continued toward the Kazekage Aisle. He'd read the patient's file before the trio had arrived, and not been too comforted by the report. He wouldn't go as far to say he was shocked; he had, after all, been working in various psychiatric hospitals for nearly a decade, but he could see why the man was in Ward A. But, perhaps a little more disturbingly, adjoined to the report on the head Sabaku was also a smaller one on his youngest son. 'Gaara – wasn't it?' he thought to himself. No question that he recognised him – the red hair and pale green eyes were unmistakeable, even if in the picture he was about nine, and his eyes were free of their current dark-rimmed state. The small blurb of text had described that his actions were 'self-defence', but had not made any attempt to breeze over their bloodiness. But then, he didn't know what he'd do if his father had treated him like that.

And still, the doctor comforted himself, they were nothing in comparison to his father. As his steps rung out through the empty hallway, his expression soured as he realised the ridiculousness of that reassurance.

* * *

The three siblings had been called out from their home in San Francisco to make the long trip to Yale-New Haven Psychiatric hospital for a patient meeting with their father – it was compulsory, they were told, unless an emergency arose. He had been in the hospital for nearly a year at this point, and was finally deemed 'safe' to meet with. The three siblings were alone, but they had been accompanied most of the way by the uncle – their mother's brother; Yashamaru. He had been appointed their guardian when their father had been arrested and submitted to the institution, but he was frail and quite sickly, and didn't get along with the Sabaku's father, and, apologising politely, had declined their invitation to come. Their other uncle, their father's brother, was out of the equation too – indeed they hardly knew what he looked like, after a falling out when Gaara was only 7 months old had meant that he had been forbidden from so much as contacting them since. Temari, three years old at that point, had a vague memory of bright red hair and sandy brown eyes; but it was so vague and hazy that she wondered if she actually remembered it at all.

So presently they felt alone, alone in a way they felt they shouldn't be considering the fact that their father was making his way towards them. For Gaara, the aloneness was a familiar feeling. He wouldn't be here if it weren't for the fact the hospital had decided it were obligatory, damn them.

He shivered as a set of footsteps sounded down the corridor, turning into their large alcove and approaching the door. It swung open and Doctor Norson entered again. He was alone. Nodding to them, he made to go and stand behind them and started to rifle through the pages in his clipboard. "They'll be along shortly," he said in response to Temari's questioning look, and the siblings lapsed back into their respective silences. Then, from the other side of the wall to Doctor Norson, came the clatter of footsteps again, many of them.

The door to their visitors section swung in, startling them, and a petite female entered, also clothed in the tell-tale white attire of the hospital. Bearing no clipboard, but with a pen tucked behind her ear along with loose bronze curls that had sprung from her ponytail, she offered them a strained smile. "Doctor Norson," she greeted the man behind them

They all turned to face the other side just as the door swing open, and a burly man entered, walking with an exaggerated limp that made the muscles in his shoulders roll as he swaggered through the door. A second bodyguard followed him, fitted in identical dark navy blue and black uniform, and then…

_He _entered.

Swathed in an off-white straitjacket which bound his arms across his chest, his face had hollowed a little over the past year, making his cheekbones a little sharper – like the blunted edges of a serrated knife. His hair was the same colour as Kankuro's, which presently was hidden under his black hat – a deep red auburn like autumn leaves. Kankuro's face resembled his too, heavier around the jaw, with wider cheek bones and a distinctly masculine cast to the powerful shape, whereas Temari strongly resembled their mother with her blonde her and teal blue eyes. The two men looked distinctly different to Gaara, whose smaller jaw and flaring cheekbones took on an almost feminine look in comparison.

Upon entering, the man's eyes narrowed immediately as he appraised the bowed red-haired head of his youngest son. Gaara kept his eyes downcast, after dropping them immediately when he had entered, not even wanting to look at the man. The silence, broken imperceptibly by the scuffle of soft-soled shoes, seemed smothering.

The third bodyguard came in and shut the door behind him, before moving to flank the restrained patient and the small room suddenly seemed cramped with all the bodies inside it. The two tallest men on either side pushed the man by the shoulders into the chair. They couldn't fasten his wrists, which were trussed up in the jacket, so instead they snapped the chains around his ankles with loud clicks that stirred the quiet. He lolled there nonchalantly after they'd finished, staring at his children.

Once they'd finished, the female doctor came over also, and greeted the visitors. "Good afternoon, I'm Dr. Rayne."

They mumbled hellos.

"Both of us will remain in here for the duration of this visit, to make sure things run smoothly and to analyse the responses and actions of the fourth," she explained in a sharp voice that sounded like it was used to being obeyed.

"F-fourth?" Inquired Kankuro, looking at their father nervously.

"We call them by room number. Familiarity often breeds chaos here, as we've experienced before. Don't worry though, the fourth is actually one of the tolerable ones." She looked between them and the other doctor. "So, shall we begin?"

"Of course," she received in reply.

"Fabulous," the woman dug around in the large pockets of her white coat, before she extracted a small white notepad and a pen. She dragged one of the spare chairs a little away from the trio and sat in it, crossing her legs and looking like an attentive student.

Dr. Norson sighed slightly and leant against the wall behind the trio, gesturing at them to carry on when they turned around.

"H-Hey Dad," Temari said a little haltingly.

"Hey Temar," he replied warmly, "Kankuro."

"Hi Pops," the brunet replied.

"How are you kids? How's school? Did you get here alright?"

Kankuro launched into conversation immediately, describing his soccer try-outs and how his incredibly nasty algebra teacher got married, to everyone's apparent surprise. When his speech slowed, Temari took over, explaining how Yashamaru had been living with them for the last few months, having come over from Wyoming. The man's response to that was sharp and probing, asking to know what he was doing.

"He's, ah, our 'guardian', for the time being," Temari told him slowly.

There was a derisive snort – which seemed disembodied to Gaara, who was staring intently at the worn knees of his black jeans. "That guy?"

"Y-yeah," Temari faltered, "Just while you… y'know."

"Don't worry honey." The voice like soothing warm water was back, "I'll be out before you know it."

Gaara's shoulders stiffened until he was sure they had turned to stone.

"And what of… _him_?"

Gaara's head jerked, completely independent of his own will, and his pale jade eyes met with the black and hate-filled ones of his father. He thought he could hear the sound of faint scribbling, but time seemed to distort, as if those eyes alone could summon up memory's he'd made his best effort to shove into drawers.

"Hi-him?" Temari repeated.

Her voice was a faint whoosh in his ears, like distant crashing waves. His mind was consumed with the malevolent glare of the man opposite him, who stared him down like he wished the straitjacket was off so he could crush Gaara's white throat in his bare, calloused hands. His face twisted, his mouth a puckered gash in his face, and his bonds strained as he wrenched on them. For one long, slow and excruciating movement, Gaara saw the straitjacket rip and release his father's arms, which rose in slow motion, moving with the speed of a blow which would take his jaw off and send it through the wall.

He blinked and the two men had his father's shoulders in fists the size of plates; the tough white jacket firmly hugging his father's arms to him. The redhead nearly sunk to floor in relief.

"What do you mean him?" Temari asked, her voice a little clearer.

"I _mean_," their father growled, his brow bunched in a grimace, "Why isn't he in _here_, the little _psycho, _after what he did to me!"

"Because he…"

"YOU SAW IT TEMARI," he bellowed at her, and she jumped violently. The six bodyguards shifted a little around him.

"Y-yes, but-"

"He should be killed for what he did." The voice was low, quiet; lanced with a poison of malignant magnitude. Gaara's eyes remained in the line of his father's gaze as though an invisible black thread linked them, bonded them. He tried to pull away, but couldn't. He tried to glare, to fight back. But he couldn't. He could do nothing.

And then he watched as this time his father did leap off the chair, tried to come blundering toward him despite tightly bound ankles, the thick white restraint was twisting – straining. And his face was… His face was…

Gaara shrunk back into his chair, terror seeping into his pores until he practically excreted it from his sweat glands. His white-emerald eyes opened wide in fear, widened until his pupils tried to crawl out and escape his body, escape this man coming towards him. Sharp, stabbing tears filled them instead, bulging out of his duct and cutting deep trenches in the skin of his cheeks.

His face was death. His face was pure death.

XXX

The room suddenly seemed to open itself like a flower and breathe again when room behind the bars emptied. A blonde head and a brunet one bent slightly over the other of stark, brilliant red. Some, the lesser of knowledge, might call it blood red – but Temari and Kankuro knew that it was the colour of Mars when it appeared briefly in the sky, or the velvety belly of a crimson tulip. The blonde stroked her hands through the soft threads lightly, crooning nothings to the hidden face of the boy. The only movement coming from him was the slow, painful drips from his cheek bones, which splashed onto his dark jeans and dyed them into little black circles.

Temari looked up at Doctor Norson, who stood rigid against the wall. "I think we're done here."

He nodded shakily, and pulled himself off the wall. Doctor Rayne stood also, and approached them slowly. Her small pad was covered in illegible notes.

"I'm sorry it had to go that way," she said, in regards to the sedation one of the bodyguards had injected into the raving excuse for a man on her orders, "But I had some good evidence and notes down, and I will continue treating him as I have done." She nodded to them, and left first.

Dr. Norson, recovering quickly, moved quickly to pull open the door. Temari put a hand as lightly as she could around the boy, levering him upright before she made sure to keep them a hairs breadth away, so that he wouldn't feel them. Kankuro flanked him protectively on the other side, and they hurried after the doctor's brisk footsteps. Entering the corridor, and leaving the sad room behind, they could faintly hear an unbroken screaming echoing from down the corridor – one long wavering note of pain; a keening. And under that, even further away, the screeching tenor of nothing less than a roar of anger: the epitome of rage expressed in a harsh, animalistic scream from coarse vocal chords. A tsunami shudder surged through the redhead, and then they were exiting through the double doors and practically hurling themselves down the corridor. The blue sign reading 'Ward A' shrank into the distance behind them.

XXX

Outside, and Gaara sank, gasping, to the floor. His lungs rejected the air, and his head swam, regurgitating loose images at him like volatile machine gun fire. First, a picture. His father lifting him over his head as a tiny, premature baby. Three months old. Bright red hair and bleary eyes, tiny mouth wobbling into a laugh. The next his father stood over him, eyes a little unfocused, his foot on Gaara's chest. Six years old. Sixs ribs crushed. Happy birthday, son. After that, just flashes, cooked food sliding into a bin, empty plate. Stumbling to bed, tired, stomach a hollow pit. Bed dissembled. Mattress. Thin blanket into a cocoon. Weeks later, no mattress. Just blanket – floorboards. A bottle through a window, and winter air iced his skin like cake frosting. A burning gaze of rage, and then limp limbs he was hauled, arms bound, from a cold, bleak hospital visiting room – his snarl blistering, freezing words eschewed from his mouth. Icicles from his roof. Sharp. Pointy little teeth as a man screamed, animal like.

"GAARA!" The agitated howl issued from his sister's mouth, directly in his line of vision. He stirred slowly, his limbs stiff. He was curled next to a closely shaven bush, wrenching on a whole handful of the thin branches, trying to press himself into the stubbly, spiky leaves. He unfolded himself, and stood with his sister's help - as she helped him away from the place, she raised a hand in goodbye to the short doctor, who stood watching with a mixture of pity and horror in his narrow eyes.

* * *

January 19th 2000: 6 Years Old

It was his hazy first memory. He walked contritely, head bowed down a little, tiny feet scuffling through the soft fronds of the rug. He was an unusual six year old, he was told later. Never ran, never smiled, never played, never laughed. His small hands, with their miniscule opal fingernails rounded like tiny marbles, tugged a smidgeon on the faded brown ears of the teddy bear he carried.

"Get off the carpet!" Came the scream, the minute warning before the blow across his face. It knocked his small form head over heels. Rolling twice, he clumsily righted himself, and looked up with small wide eyes-

"I didn't say get up, did I?"

The foot on his chest, pushing. "Did I?"

Desperately, he shook his head, small lips frantically trying to from the 'no', but the air expelling from his sinking lungs allowed no break for it to surface.

"Can't _hear _you," his father snarled, spittle flying from his lips, stinking of alcohol and anger. From behind the door, a blonde and a brunet peeked wide eyes out. There was a crack, and then another. Four more, barely heard under the shrill, agonising scream issuing from the child's throat.

"Happy birthday son." And he was left crying softly to himself on the carpet to wait for the dawn, where he was limply carried to the hospital. It was a 'falling cabinet', his father tearfully explained, the hand holding Gaara's squeezing just a little too hard, 'a cabinet of glass'.

March 2002: 8 Years Old

Gaara's stomach rumbled tiredly. He thrust his fists into it immediately, terror knotting into a hard ball under his knuckles as he listened for the approach of heavy footsteps. There was nothing. Relaxing marginally, he tripped into his bedroom, lunging for the mattress. He halted at the last minute, but the lurching of his footsteps took him anyway, and he fell hard on his chin. Slowly, tears welling in his aquamarine eyes he pushed himself up and looked around. His room was bare apart from the wardrobe lurking in the corner. The mattress was gone.

Footsteps hammered at the stairs and his door flung open, slamming back against the wall. "BOY!" His father roared, glaring at him through red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes. "I SAID NO NOISE!"

"I-I-I'm s-so-sorry," he warbled tearfully, but all he received was a slap round the head for his stammered apologies.

"You made me pause the rugby." His face was suddenly close, hot breath rolling over the child's fearful face with the pungent odour of beer and unbrushed teeth. He was so close Gaara could see one rotted black molar in the back of his gums. "Wh-where is th-the mattress, Papa?" He chanced to ask.

The teeth rolled into a smile, close to the small child's nose. "I figured you wouldn't be-" he tottered to the left in his crouch, and the redhead's face followed his progress fearfully, "needing it anymore. Understand, fucker?"

"Yes Papa," the child whispered obediently. Another glancing blow to the head knocked him over, and he stayed down, like he knew he should. The door slammed behind the retreating figure, and in the periphery of his vision, Gaara spotted the ragged edge of a sheet sticking into the silvery cast of the moonlight on the bare boards. He staggered over to it in a crawl and tugged on it. A wide sheet, the one that had been on the mattress, unravelled itself from the bundle, dragging a small, moth-eaten bear with it. Mouth opening in silent delight, the child grabbed the toy and nuzzled into the soft, musty-smelling belly.

'I missed you teddy,' he mouthed silently into the small, button eyes which gleamed dimly in the moonlight. He folded the blanket around the bear first, and snuggled happily into its comforting side.

April 2003, 9 Years Old

"YOU IDIOT!" Broken ceramic glanced off the floor, scratching the wooden legs of the table; the small slivers embedding themselves with speed into the child's ankles. "I ASKED FOR BEEF. DID YOU NOT HEAR ME ASK FOR BEEF?"

A steady drip of red pasta sauce dripped off the table with the consistency of congealed blood. The child, tiny for his age, stood with enormous eyes riveted on his advancing father. Shivers wracked his slim frame as he pulled his hands in front of his chest, covering his heart. The plop of a piece of pasta sliding from the table top caused a twitch to start in the man's eye.

"I'VE HAD IT!" He bellowed, lurching for the tiny, terrified creature in front of him. He grabbed his shoulder roughly, eliciting a shrill cry from the puny thing, and stormed out of the room, dragging his son behind him. His other two offspring huddled in the blonde's bed in their shared room atop the stairs, arms around each other as the repeated thunks evened out into the schhhhhh of something being dragged across the carpet of the landing.

They stayed there while the roars bounced into their room from the grate in the wall, hearing something smash once; a bright tinkle among the duller thuds and grunts.

There was a last roar and cry, a wet crunch and silence fell upon the house. The two gradually slunk into sleep, but Temari was restless. Shortly after sleeping, she awoke from a nightmare. Her first thought through her exhausted brain was 'Papa', and despite a niggling feeling that she shouldn't leave the bed, she went in search.

When she couldn't find him in his vast double bed, she tried her youngest brother's room. Slowly, not expecting to find him there anyway, she swung open the door.

Blood. The tang of it in the room. A huddled figure knelt on the floor, baby sized next to the large misshapen shape next to it. Her father, his skull caved on an imposing wedge of metal – the doorstop that usually propped open the door to her father's study.

She screamed.

July 2005: 11 Years Old

"Hello son."

A white box appeared in his vision as he hunched in the corner of his bare room, sitting on the severed head of his teddy so that his father wouldn't see it, take it and punish him for fishing it out of the bin.

"Good evening Father," he mumbled slowly.

"I have something for you." His smile was predatory. Straightening, he turned around and walked across the room. The early-evening sun rays glinted off the puckered scar twisting around the back of his head and cutting his hairline in two. The man had lost the weight he had put on by drinking and overindulging over the last two years, but what he had lost had filled out into lean, thick muscle from pounding large filled bags at their local gym.

"I think it's time you learned of your past."

"O-okay, Father?"

The twisted leer was back, gleaming at him. "More specifically, of your mother."

A small white pill was thrust into one hand, and a glass of water into the other, slopping a little over Gaara's grey, two-sizes-too-big t-shirt. He didn't immediately swallow them, a mistake, as his father, the animalistic shine in his eyes again, leaned in and grasped his jaw in his large hands, forcing it open. The pill was in, and the water sloshed down afterwards, choking him as he struggled to swallow it.

The effect was immediate. Warmth blossomed in the base of his stomach, make him gasp at the lurching sensation it left. It centred into an almost painful prickling heat, which split into two and went up and down. His face flushed a painful, horrid heat; but worse, the spiky heat gathered at his navel and jerked down. His _thingy _stirred, and lifted, to his horror.

His father's feral grin turned into one of satisfied disgust.

"You sick fuck Gaara. You aren't my son. You're sick. Turned on." The snarl bubbled with laughter from his father's hideous smile, "You are no child of mine. Faggot."

Tears began to form, furious, scared, unbidden tears that slid with quiet hisses down his face. He was confused. He didn't know this method of torture. He didn't know what to do. Did he try not to move, like he did when was hit? Did he bow low enough to touch his head to the floor, like he did when he was shouted at? He didn't know what to do.

"Crying Gaara? Weak. You disgust me." His father sounded delighted, as he verbally battered the child in front of him. "Well, little faggot." Gaara snivelled pitifully in response.

"You're a murderer."

It was a voice of his father's that he only pulled out when he truly wanted fear. When he wanted Gaara writhing in a small hunched ball at his feet, petrified with terror. Or else backed into a corner, paralysed, fearing all the things a child should not be fearing. Pain. Hate. Blood.

"I…I…"

The huge fist bunched around Gaara's crotch and crushed. He screamed in the pure, unbelievable agony of it. Stars danced behind his vision; white and blue and black, exploding like dying constellations as the shrieks drowned his ears in pain.

"You killed her." The hand retreated but the pain remained like white hot iron lancing through his veins. More blows, skin breaking with silent tears. "You tore a mother from Temari, from Kankuro." A backhand: his face crunched against the wall. "You took my wife from me." A dozen jabs all coming from nowhere, crunching into his body until he didn't know where to roll; instead curling into a little ball of flushed torture as they rained upon his exposed back and legs.

"ANSWER ME, GODDAMIT. YOU KILLED YOUR MOTHER. YOU KILLED HER LIKE YOU TRIED TO KILL ME."

The scar twisted and rippled at the back of his head. "SO WHAT. DO. YOU. SAY?"

"I'm sorry," groaned Gaara around a dribble of blood trickling out of his lips, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm- I'm sorry…"

The man left him there, mumbling to himself, clutching at his stomach, his crotch, until the warmth subsided and he was left cold and broken, curled like a hedgehog over the bodiless head of his only friend. _I'msorryI'msorryI'msorryI'msorryI'msorryI'msorry…_

November 2010: 16 Years Old

The wind was cold. People hurried along the street outside, swathed in scarves and thick winter coats. Gaara watched listlessly through the window at a woman chasing after her baby's small pom-pom hat as it disappeared in a strong gust.

"Mr Sabaku."

He turned back to the women in front of him reflexively, then internally questioned his actions. He'd turned to stare out of the window in the first place because she was so boring to listen to after all.

"Your father?" Well, for that reason too. She was too damn probing. Trying to pry her blundering way into his past without permission, to stick her snub nose in where it didn't belong. But, better to answer the question, however vaguely, than have her trying to dig up deeper things.

"Locked up two years ago."

She seemed relieved to finally have an answer, and leaned forward in her seat eagerly. "Why is that? What happened, Mr Sabaku – may I call you Gaara?"

"No."

She leaned back again. "I'm here to help you… Mr Sabaku," she assured him in a warm tone. Gaara stared at her coldly for longer than a normal person would, and she shifted in her seat. Only one man was the master of the warm voice, and that man would never speak to him in it, no matter how Gaara the Child had wished for it. He did not appreciate it resurfacing now.

"You can talk to me, that's what I'm here for," the woman repeated. She smiled at him, although Gaara could see the toll it was beginning to take. They'd been sitting here for two hours now, and dusk was beginning to crawl into the edges of the window, lit by the glowing orange balls of the streetlights outside.

"I hate your cardigan."

She blinked at him. "I…beg your pardon?"

"It's completely hideous."

She pulled the lavender monstrosity across her large bosom unconsciously. "My cardigan isn't the issue here, Mr Sabaku."

"Maybe not here, but it's lavender, and that's definitely an issue."

She didn't seem to know what to reply, at least not without sounding professional. Instead, to do something with her hands, she gathered the small pile of sheets she had on her lap and tapped them together. She shuffled through them once, before spotting something and seizing it. She looked at Gaara with her 'kindly matron' gaze. "Now darling, I have a small sheet to fill out here, just basic information for you, if you'd be so kind..?"

Gaara didn't say anything in reply, so she took it as a yes and continued anyway.

"Ahem, your date of birth?"

Gaara slumped a little in his chair, showing the woman his immediate loss of the will to live. "19th January 1994," he deadpanned, examining his nails.

"Great…" There was a quick scribble, "Siblings names?"

"Temari, Kankuro." His voice was completely expressionless.

"They're unusual names, aren't they?" She asked brightly. Gaara lifted a finger to his mouth as she watched him, clamped his teeth down on the chipped hangnail and yanked his head to the left, ripping the broken bit of nail off. He spat it from his teeth, and turned to look back at the counsellor.

She closed her mouth and scanned down the list. "Ahh, um now, yes, your favourite colour?"

Gaara sighed and cocked an eyebrow slightly to himself. "I have several," he replied woodenly, seeing if she'd take the bait.

"Brilliant!" She beamed at him, "Let's hear them then!"

Well, she asked for it. "Red, as in the colour of blood."

Her pen paused above the sheet as she took that in. "Or grey, the colour of ashes." Again, her pen dipped, to pause when she heard the elaboration. "I quite like transparent too." He paused, waiting.

"T-transparent?" She asked.

"Of someone's tears. But personally, I prefer black. The eternal night."

"Black then?" She concluded weakly, and wrote it down. Gaara allowed himself one roll of his eyes. Looking a little less confident, the woman's eyes perused the paper.

"Um, sexual… preference?" She tried tentatively.

Now Gaara understood. "Is this because of the jibe at your cardigan?" he asked boredly.

"Not at all!" The woman puffed up indignantly, "I would never be so unprofessional!"

Gaara looked at her distastefully. You're _being_ unprofessional, he thought to himself, but neglected to say it. She had gotten enough out of him already.

"It's just on the sheet," the counsellor defended herself. "So, what… is your answer?"

"What was the question again?"

"Y-your sexual preference!" She spluttered.

"If being straight means I would wear a cardigan like that, then I must be a faggot." He stood from his chair and walked out of the room, ignoring her unintelligible protests. Trudging down the street to his home, he growled darkly to himself. Stupid Temari. Stupid counselling. Stupid hospital. Stupid _father_. He launched a kick at a bin on the side of the road and it went flying with a loud clatter. The owner of the house stuck his head out of the door, and started up an angry yelling. Gaara cast him a murderous glare and he quieted, distracted by the fury in the boy's eyes. The redhead traipsed away angrily, leaving the rubbish scattering in the wind behind him.

February 2012: 18 Years Old

The blonde stood over the prone form on the hospital bed. The young man's chest rose and fell with a light fluttering, like a butterfly on a branch. His red hair was ruffled over his forehead and on the synthetic plastic pillow, and his face was… what could only be described as peaceful.

"He'll be fine." Doctor Keff came to stand at Temari's side. He smiled down at her, and then stifled a yawn in the crook of his elbow. "The cuts weren't particularly deep, so they won't scar. We just had to put him under briefly because he was putting him up such a struggle, and…" The tall man leaned over a little to look into his face, which, despite being relaxed in sleep, looked haggard. "Well, I don't think he's getting much sleep as it is, am I right?"

Temari confirmed with a nod of her head. "He's always up when we go to bed, and if we get up in the middle of the night or early in the morning, he'll already be awake. We think…that he's developed insomnia."

Doctor Keff looked grave. "We've done a synopsis based on your father's convictions and your own story. Insomnia, yes, but-"

"What now?" Temari interrupted, a little fearfully.

"Insomnia's not the whole issue," he told her, meeting her concerned teal eyes, "Disrupted sleep pattern is usually part of the whole picture. I'm afraid the issue here is on a much larger scale. We believe he has a chronic post-traumatic stress disorder."

Temari looked on the verge of collapsing. Gently, the pale-skinned doctor led her to the chair next to Gaara's bedside and sat her down next to Kankuro, who slumped on his own chair with his mouth open. "Thanks," she mumbled as the man offered her a glass of water and ran his hands through his dark hair. "So what does this… post-traumatic stress disorder thing mean?"

"Basically, it occurs from psychological trauma in an individual's life," the man explained patiently, "It's a severe anxiety disorder. Technically speaking, there are three types." He held up his index finger. "Acute stress disorder, which is more generally referred as just 'shock', and is the most commonly seen." He followed with a middle finger, forming a deuce sign, "PTSD, which stands for post-traumatic stress disorder, is more severe, but is both treatable and curable."

"And chronic?" Temari asked quietly in his lapse of speech.

The doctor sighed. "Chronic is treatable, but not curable. Those who suffer from it have to live alongside it."

Temari's limbs jammed up in fear. The doctor noticed her stress, and smiled slightly, trying to placate her. "Don't worry. As of yet we cannot jump to conclusions. The source of the trauma disappeared from your brother's life six years ago, yes?" He waited for her to confirm before continuing, "And he didn't display any symptoms until a year later. This leaves both the post and chronic disorders open." The man watched as Temari drooped forwards in relief. "So now we wait. Neither are good to have, and the experiences required to acquire the disorders..." He trailed off, shaking his head as looked down at the slight man on the hospital bed.

Temari swallowed with difficulty. "So," she said hoarsely, "What do you propose we do?"

"I-" The man smiled down at her, "Suggest a holiday."

XXX

Kankuro awoke to his sister roughly shaking him, and he sprung out of his awkward sitting position immediately, face paling. He took a look at her ashen face and dived over to his brother's bedside, pressing a hand to his neck, and then to his chest while Temari and Doctor Keff watched him with bemused expressions. Kankuro turned around slowly, expression dark.

"Temari," he muttered.

"Yes?" She blinked at him.

"He's bloody NOT DEAD is he? Why'dya wake me up, eh?" His face quickly assumed a very familiar sulky look.

A nerve jumped in Temari's jaw. "Sit. Down." She thrust him into the seat he'd just thrown himself from. "And shut up." Kankuro acquiesced grumpily at the dangerous look he was getting from his sister.

"So what's this about then?" He asked, once he was sure the issue wasn't Gaara's imminent death. The blonde sighed as she brushed the fringe behind her ears.

"You explain," she mumbled to the doctor, who complied without complaint. By the end, the brunet was silent in consternation.

"So," the doctor continued, and received Kankuro's full attention; a rarity that Temari though the older man probably didn't appreciate enough. "Your sister and I have drawn the conclusion that a month's retreat would probably be the best idea."

The pair watched Kankuro put two and two together and make three hundred. His face widened in glee. "So, ya mean, like, a holiday?"

"I guess so, yes," the dark-haired haired doctor agreed, and Kankuro let out a whoop. Temari shushed him, and he settled with a little guilty smile on his face. "Where? Where? Oh, Florida, can we, can we?" He jiggled on the seat. The woman shot him an irritated look, and he calmed again.

"We cobbled some ideas together-"

"No, AUSTRALIA! Can we? CAN WE?"

"Shhh!" Temari hissed, annoyed. "No! Not Australia. Shut up and listen." At Kankuro's contrite look, she turned to the doctor.

An amused look on his face, he continued. "Yes, we had some good ideas, but in the end we couldn't choose-"

"So?" Kankuro interjected eagerly.

Noticing that Temari was close to clobbering her brother over the head, the doctor held up his hand, in which he held Kankuro's black hat. The brunet's hand went to his head and ruffled through his hair. "Hey…is _that_-"

"_Yes_." Temari snarled, "I took it off your head when you were sleeping like a dead person, spewing enough drool to make Noah feel the need to build another ark." Kankuro glared at her.

"In here," the doctor interrupted loudly, "are half a dozen 'holiday' ideas. As it's your hat, young man, I suggest you choose."

"I'm nineteen," the brunet grumbled to himself as he eagerly plunged his hand into the hat and seized a small folded square. He pulled it out, but didn't open it. Both the doctor and Temari leaned in as he held it in his lap despite themselves; silently urging him on as he toyed with the fold. "Better be Australia," he warned as he unfolded it.

In the middle, in Doctor Keff's neatly scrawled handwriting, was the word: 'SCOTLAND.'

"Scotland?" He cried in revulsion.

"Scotland." Temari agreed in satisfaction.

The other man patted her shoulder, "That's the one you wanted, right?" She looked up into his face, and his eyes crinkled into a smile at her. She reciprocated it, and nodded, before she turned to her sleeping brother.

"It will be good for him," she said softly, "Maybe he'll even meet someone. Some nice Scottish lass with…"

"With what?" Kankuro pressed.

"I don't know," she admitted, "I don't know what Scottish people look like."

"Bright eyes," Kankuro guessed.

"With long brown hair," Temari added.

"And a Scottish accent," the doctor finished, and laughed at the 'duh' looks the two Sabakus gave him. Next to them the redhead closed his hand around the corner of the sheet he lay on, oblivious to the world around him.

* * *

"Gaara!"

The redhead startled, nearly knocking the kitten flying from his lap. As he spun in two different directions for the multiple voices calling him, he saw Temari emerge from the doorway of the cottage, a grave look on her face. She clutched the Yale-New Haven letter in her hands. The redhead's heart pulled a diving flip-flop and lurched drunkenly around his chest. "Wh-what?"

Temari's face had returned to her normal tan. "No, it can wait. Hi Neji!" She waved to someone behind Gaara. He turned and spotted the long-haired Scot approaching at a light run, and lifted his hand in a little wave; it felt silly compared to his sister's enthusiastic one. As he watched the brunet approach, some old memory jumped, unbidden, to his mind.

"Are you wearing _lavender?_" He called to the man as he jogged up.

Neji shot him a withering look. "It's _lilac_, Gaara."

Temari stuck her head out of the door, surprise bowing her eyebrows over her eyes. "Are you two _gay?"_ Simultaneously, they stung their tongues out at her.

"What did you want," Gaara asked the taller man, waving his legs a little from his perch. Neji reached over to rub Boxie behind her ears, and she mewled a sleepy hello.

"Everyone's havin' tatties an' neebs at Th' Lion's Hart, sae they sent me up haur tae teel ye, as nane ay ye ur answerin' yer phones," Neji explained.

Gaara looked confused. "Everyone's having… potatoes..?" He asked slowly.

Neji blinked at him. "Whit? Nae, Ah meant, och, hoo dae ye say it - _dinner_, tonecht at aicht."

"Oh I see," Gaara nodded at him. "At when?"

"Aicht."

"Eight?"

"Aye, tha's whit ah said. Aicht."

Gaara couldn't help it; he started laughing.

The Scot's brow furrowed, "Oi, nae pickin' oan th' Scotsman," he chided him.

Gaara's laughter eased a little. "D'you want to come in?" He asked.

Temari appeared at his shoulder, a little grimace on her face. "I'd love to invite you in Nej, but we've got a pressing family meeting to attend to. Important, and most likely boring stuff, you know?"

"Ah ken," the Scot said amicably, I'll see you'ze aw at aicht." He waved goodbye to the pair on the porch and set off back down the track, the sun glowing off his hoodie.

"Neji," Gaara called after him, and the long-haired man turned.

"It's _lavender_!"

The man's chuckles drifted toward them from down the path as the pair turned to enter the house again.

* * *

**Hee hee hee :3 I couldn't resist a little last minute banter, which wasn't in the chapter originally. Ah, you little homosexual duckies :3**

**I'm sorry if this was a little... upsetting to anyone. I got awful sad writing it :'( Next chapter will be short, and then just you wait to see what I unleash xD**

**Much love!**


	7. Chapter 7

**Oh my gosh everyone! 16 to 22 reviews in one chapter? O_e that's like, crazy. Thanks a million and a bit more.  
To the anon reviewer, ahhh, it's killing that I can't just email you haha :P I know, you picked out the one thing in the last chapter that was niggling me. I was going to redo it later on, but seeing as you pointed it out, I've redone it now. Taa for that! **

**Okay, now I don't know if you want to, but if you do, here are the songs I used to write this: 'Rose', and 'Hymn of the Sea' from Titanic, 'Haru Haru (Piano Instrumental)' by BIGBANG: /watch?v=SEl6kXVZSn4&feature=related , and 'Eternal Flame' by The Bangles. **

**Okay, now that that's out of the way, I really hope you enjoy! I am so raving for the next chapter now! ;O**

**Disclaimer: I do not own the idea or the rights to Naruto, this is purely an idea from my own messed up, Yaoi-orientated little head!**

* * *

It had been a nice day out, again. Scotland _could_ have them, Neji Hyuuga mused to himself as he leaned over the polished bar, his head resting on his hands. He was tall enough that his spine had to curve a little to allow this, a point his blonde companion enjoyed emphasizing by prodding the base of his ridged back, making him involuntarily bend completely the other way, stomach and navel out. He turned to glare at Naruto for the – he didn't even know how many times; he'd lost count. "Stop," he growled into the brilliant blue eyes, "Daein' that."

"Doing what?" The blonde asked oh-so innocently.

The Scot was reaching the end of his tether. It was always… trying, around Naruto. He moved away, out of arms reach, again, noting that he was running out of bar to lean against. It was gradually yellowing outside, the bright afternoon fading into the dim tint of dusk. Against the window, Neji noticed a large, soft buzz of darkness moving jerkily. He crossed to the table, glad it was empty, his long-fingered hands forming a passable ball shape around the stray moth. It battered the walls of his fingers uselessly, the panicked thrumming of its soft wings a pleasant tickle when compared to Naruto's teasing jabs earlier. In a single deft movement, Neji unclasped the window with his elbow. He watched the released moth flutter into the sunset just as the door to the establishment swung open. Neji might have wondered who it was – after all, all the regulars were here on a Sunday evening – had he not seen the blonde ponytail from out the window. He slid out of the table, leaving the window open, and raised a brief hand in greeting at the blonde as he got behind the bar again. The energetic man threw himself down on the bar stool next to Naruto, clearly in a good mood. "Hey Nej, Naru, un."

"Deidara!" The short-haired blonde exclaimed, clapping him over the back. Neji fought back the overwhelming desire to slam his head very hard against the beer taps next to him.

"Wae," he asked wearily, "arr ye in sooch a gieud muid, baith ay ye?"

"It's Sunday," Naruto replied with large eyes at the long-haired man, as if it were obvious.

"When are the Sabakus getting here?" Deidara trilled, completely ignoring the question. Neji sighed. The guy had a one track mind.

"Aicht," he replied in a dull tone.

"So, in an hour, un?"

"Aye, Deidara. In an hoor."

There was an amicable silence between the trio – or at least between the blondes. Neji felt… on edge, to say the least. Today was – no. It didn't bear thinking about. Or did it? Surely he… no. There was no point in sitting around and being miserable, even if he was perfectly justified in doing so. And from Naruto's cheery attitude, it appeared he didn't realise what the date was either. Deidara… Deidara didn't know anyway. Everyone would know if Deidara knew. The man never forgot a date. Sighing, Neji rubbed his forehead with his sleeve.

"Hey, un..." Deidara's contemplative tone made the muscles in the Scot's shoulders stiffen; was his face easy to read?

"D'you reckon Gaara will be wearing that totally sexy maroon cardigan of his?" The brunet looked up in disbelief to see the long-haired blonde shifting sheepishly on his stool, an excited look on his face. The Hyuuga felt a brief twinge of annoyance. The guy needed to get a life and move on. From what he knew of the redhead, and he'd been gathering snippets of deduced information over the couple of weeks he'd known the American siblings and filing them away in his mind, the teen was quiet, and not a company whore at all, unlike Deidara. He wasn't a conversationalist and froze up worse than a skittish horse whenever the blonde man so much as made the smallest suggestive touch. Yet the confusion in his eyes told him that, even though he did not like it, he didn't know how to rebuke the contact without being – what? It was here that Neji drew the blank. What was Gaara afraid of?

"And you?" Came the teasing tone from the pair sitting opposite the tall Scot. He tuned back into the conversation absently, watching Naruto's face listlessly as it brightened and reddened.

"What are you talking about, dick?" He replied in a laugh, throwing a light punch at Deidara, who took it and wiggled his eyebrows suggestively at the other man. 'Sex maniac', Neji thought to himself.

"I'm talking about you, un. And your," he dropped his voice a few tones, in an attempt at huskineness, "latest conquest."

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

The other man adjusted his ponytail with irritating smugness. "You know _exactly _what I'm talking about, un." He swilled the contents of Naruto's beer glass around, his right eyebrow nearly disappearing into his high blonde hairline. "Eyes the colour of night, hair the deepest dyed-est blue black, like ravens feathers…" He leaned closer, "Luscious pink lips-"

He received a hand planted palm down across his face, the fingers digging into the his lightly tanned cheeks. Naruto rolled his eyes at Neji. "You'd think he was doing an English course like me instead of an art one, wouldn't you," he laughed, unfazed, completely breezing over the other man's simpering attempt at wiggling information from him. The taller man completely ignored him, reaching for a cloth and running it over the clean taps.

"You're in a really bad mood," the short-haired blonde observed in an offhand tone.

'Nae shit,' the brunet thought sourly to himself, still polishing the gleaming taps. Considering what day it was today – Naruto, the little shit. He'd already been to visit him, of course, for an hour this morning. It was early, too early for his blonde friend to be up; ten o'clock was a struggle for him, let alone seven. But Naruto… No, he shouldn't be getting irritated; it wasn't for him to remember anyway – that didn't matter. Neji was getting irritated for a _whole _other reason entirely, and it irked him.

An hour… He'd have time.

"Gae an' sit doown, Ah'll be back shortly," Neji announced suddenly, throwing the cloth down and disappearing into the kitchen, leaving his companions blinking, their joking wrestling match halted in its footsteps, behind him. He didn't even have to search to spot the hulking figure digging something from the fiery belly of their biggest oven. "Lar'!" He called.

The huge man turned, offering a whiskered smile at the younger man around his terrifyingly unruly red beard and straightening up. Neji stood at an impressive 6 foot 1, almost an inch and a half above Naruto and nearly six inches above the red-haired Sabaku, but despite this, the chef in front of him dwarfed him in every aspect: height, width – he had him down.

"Ye wanted soomthin' lad?" The massive man boomed.

"Aye…" Neji toyed with the hem of his white t-shirt for a moment, unsure of how to phrase his request now that he was here. Larry was a tolerant man, and a fair one by all costs, but he treated the pub like his personal child and the Scot was unsure how he would take this.

"Lad. Ah'm tryin' tae dae sum cookin', if yer nae haur fur a guid reason, en' run alang."

Neji steeled himself. "Actually Larry, Ah was wonderin' if Ah cood tak' half an hoor aff. There's - Ah wanted... tae see Paps afair ma shift ends. Everyone's comin' doon haur, an'," Neji tried to swallow around the stupid lump forming in his throat, "Ah willnae be able tae see heem again tonight."

The man's harsh, cracked and rugged features softened in a small shift that any who didn't know him well wouldn't notice. "Aye lad," he replied in his deep tenor, "Ah'll excuse ye."

"Cheers Lar'," Neji replied quietly, and headed through the kitchen to the back door. He slipped his white-beige jacket off the employer's hooks and, shrugging it on, walked into the strong breeze of the Scottish springtime.

* * *

Gaara sat on the steps of the front door, arms around his legs, eyes unseeingly staring into the clouds of glittering bugs that drifted like dust motes over the pocked grasslands. The sinking sun lit the stiff grass fronds in slowly glowing yellow light, until he looked like he was sitting atop the mane of an enormous lion. Gaara didn't notice this though, his thoughts turned inward in a rude, stark reflection of the likes he hadn't experienced since their plane touched down in Scotland.

A wandering hand brushed down the plane of his chest and fisted in the woollen burgundy cardigan that snuggled like an ugly cat across his back. Physical pain blossoming under the spot where he was clutching at his skin did nothing to quell the gagging feeling scratching from his hollow, empty stomach up to his throat. For a moment it lasted like that, until Gaara succumbed, bending double over his knees and retching horribly, the walls of his throat colliding like sandpaper, his chest heaving, his ribs bending – all uselessly. His throat pipe remained mercifully empty. He remained like that for a moment, frozen in the ridiculous pose, until his body gave up and allowed him to slump bonelessly against the cold stone steps. His fingers dug at his chest and stomach; pinching, digging and scratching at the pale skin all in order to stop the useless keening that was beginning to bubble up his wretched throat and erupt as a scream of pure and unadulterated agony.7

* * *

Neji trudged through the yellow evening at a lethargic pace, scuffing the worn toes of his favourite white converse on the uneven path. He was nearing the outskirts of the small village, having nearly sprinted through the weaving lanes of houses. The layout of Altnaharra was that of a loose, jagged oval, and as he was nearing the western side, the houses were starting to become sparser, and the expanse of the Highlands with its mountains in the hazy distance were becoming easier to see. He ambled along the narrow path between two cream houses with damp straw rooves and climbed over the steel gate rather than opening it. The track wove on, but from here on in long grass and nettles encroached on the trodden path, making it difficult to traverse. Neji traipsed along in silence, barely noticing the clingy, thorny clasps of hidden plants biting into his jeans. In front of him was a wide paddock that didn't know whether to be rectangular or square, and was around the length and breadth of a couple of the houses of the village. The weather-faded fencing had been painted in recent weeks, a fresh white coat that reflected the sluggish sunlight.

The long-haired man paused at the familiar black-iron gate, resting his hand on the rusted metal and toying with the flecks of moss adorning the old construction, before he swung it open with the classic screech of unoiled hinges. Entering the area conjured, as it always did, memories of misting rain falling on his head on a grey Scottish afternoon. He was surrounded by men and women with emotion worn on the outsides of their bodies; shoulders slumped in dejection and mouths downturned. The thin rain didn't quite hide the steady, substantial liquid pouring from their eyes. And they all wore white. That's what he remembered the most. All the white.

He twisted through the grey headstones until he reached the large one at the far side, directly in the middle, only the fence separating it from the downs. It stood out from the rest in a stark and noticeable way, the sunlight putting to shame the repainted fencing as it bypassed its newness to illuminate the rounded edges and softly carved letters on the pure white marble headstone in front of the brunet.

_Hizashi Hyuuga._

Neji dropped to his knees, his legs seeming unable to hold himself up anymore, reaching out to brush his fingers over the 'z' in his father's name. "Hi Paps," he mumbled to the stone tablet. It said nothing back, obviously, but it seemed to glow a little brighter. A wobbly smile spread on his face, like the ones that used to occupy his smaller face when he sat here, cross-legged in front of his father's white grave with adults or by himself. He remembered that he was told that it was disrespectful to stand or sit on a person's place of rest, but ever since he could remember, he would sit cross-legged, like he was now, in the middle of the fist-sized white stones that circled the long rectangle of his father's body. It reminded him of when they used to play or wrestle, and his father would give-up in mock defeat, leaving Neji triumphantly crowing on his chest, before he grabbed him and lifted him high over his head – Neji would spread his arms and pretend he was a bird. A dove, that was his father's favourite. A white dove. It was a habit that had never faded, not even when he was repeatedly told off. He fancied that by sitting in front of the large stone, where his father's chest would be, that he could hear a faint heartbeat emanating from the long-settled soil under him.

"Naruto is haur again, Paps," he said absent-mindedly to him, "An' some Americans, can ye believe it. They're a strange group, bu' I like them. They're less lood than th' ones 'at ur oan TV." He plucked a daisy, a small unhealthy looking one, and began to pull the petals out and scatter them like tiny flakes of snow through the grass.

"But i've met some-wain like 'at man ye tauld me abit, Paps, 'at friend ye met in America. Ye said he hud hair redder than a postbox, Paps." Tears were forming in Neji's eyes, not pricking ones, but cold ones that rolled like slow motion rain down his alabaster cheeks. "But Ah bet Ah can a body up ye, this bloke has hair loch a stop light! An' green eyes, ye ne'er mentioned eny'en like 'at Paps, aboot yer 'Merican laddie." The tears were cooling in the wind, flashing away and leaving salty tracks over his face only to be washed away by new ones. An image of Gaara formed in his mind, next to a photograph he frequently saw of his father on the man's dresser: the mirror image of his uncle, a broad grin stretching his younger face as he slung an arm over a man with hair as red as, if not brighter than, Gaara Sabaku's. The stranger's eyes were the colour of dark quicksand, and narrower and more thickly-lashed than the American's almond ones.

"Ye coulda tekken me tae meet him, Paps," he mumbled, his eyes angled down under the heavy weight of his wet lashes. "I've nae been tae America afore."

The talking, instead of easing the lump in his throat, was swelling it to the size of a watermelon. He bent over the small, pale pebbles he'd collected over the dozen years his father had been sleeping in this pretty graveyard, harsh and broken sobs falling from his lips.

"I m-miss ye Paps. I s-still miss ye."

XXX

"PAPS!" The shrill scream of laughter as the boy went tearing through the small, tidily kept garden echoed into the kitchen. A man emerged from the dark doorway at the call, tall and long-limbed, deep chocolate hair falling over his shoulders. He was smiling gently at the small terror charging through the mown grass.

"Poppa!" The child screamed as he saw him, making such a sharp 360 degrees turn that he slipped on the grass and landed face-first into the daisies. The taller Hyuuga began to make his way quickly towards his fallen son, expecting tears, but stopped in his tracks when the tiny bundle of energy was up a moment later, face gleeful as he dive-bombed his father's legs. Strong masculine laughter resonated from his chest as he picked the boy up and held him above his head in large, broad hands. The miniature Hyuuga squealed in delight, spreading his arms and wiggling his legs with a blissful expression on his face.

"Whit aar ye daein' son?" The man laughed as his child giggled to himself. The little round face, flushed from the activity, looked down at him with huge, pale pupils. They glistened happily in the sun as the dimpled cheeks spread under the smile.

"I'm bein' a _dove_ Poppa," the child explained patiently, moving his fingers through the wind.

"Oh?" The man smiled to himself as the six year old flapped his arms like wings. "And whit aar doves, Neji?"

"Doves are freeee, Poppa!" He chirped delightedly in reply, responding to their game they always played, and then emitted a high shriek as his father plunged him through the air and ran with him through the garden.

XXX

"PAPS!"

The child paused in the garden, looking towards the wooden door to the kitchen. It was empty. A cool wind surged through the branches of the trees bordering the garden, the last things apart from the tall fence before the village ended and the unbroken plains of heather and grass began. The small figure ran to the red fence, pressing one eye to a small hole in the wood. Through it he could see the huge space, shaded in different variations of grey and green, that moved in a ripple as the wind dragged itself through it. The blooming flowers dotted the never-ending field with splatters of colour, like an artist's palette.

'Summer,' Neji told himself, repeating his father's words from last year. That summer seemed a long time ago. Nowadays his father didn't play the Dove Game with him anymore. He just slept.

Remembering his uncle's words, Neji grabbed his toy rabbit by the ear from where it was draped over the climbing frame and darted back into the house, small bare feet pattering on the carpet from where he'd left his dirty shoes on the mat. He ran to his father's bedroom, struggling with the handle; he could only just reach it. The door swinging open, Neji could see his father's prone form under the covers on the bed. He pulled off his coat, getting the zipper stuck on the fabric and battling for a few long minutes before he finally got free of it. It was with a small, cute frown on his face that he finally clambered onto the bed and over to his father. What had uncle Hiashi said? Hands… to heart. He pressed his tiny white hands onto his father's clothed torso, hunting around with an intense scowl on his face. _Where… where was the… heart again? Oh! There! _Neji could feel the slow, methodic thump under his palms. Satisfied, he curled up next to the warmth that was the favourite man in his world, head over the lullaby of pounding that lulled him to sleep.

"Neji… Neji, wake up son…"

Small, pearl eyes opened and smiled into the light eyes of his father. He yawned widely. "He-hewwo Poppa!"

The familiar hand came down and rustled through his hair. "Hello son."

Neji thought his eyes were a little sad, a little down-turned in the corners, but he didn't know why. Maybe Poppa had stubbed his toe, Neji knew _that_ really hurt. He was looking a little thinner too. "Paps, are ye nae eating pwoperly?" Neji tried to put on his best adult voice, just like his Poppa did.

The elder man laughed in surprise. "Huh? Nae, Ah guess not."

The chibi Hyuuga scowled at him. "Yoo need tae eat yoor VEGGIES, Paps, silly!" The elder Hyuuga's worn face cracked into a smile as he laughed at the disapproving face on his only son, a deep frown which only increased as the man patted his thickly-haired head.

"Yoo're right, Neji, Ah doo." He smiled down at him. "Nae, stop tellin' me aff, an' gae an' gi' dressed."

"Wae, Poppa?" The six year old clambered after his father's retreating frame. He turned around, and grinned at his son.

"We're go'an oot!"

X

Neji was overjoyed, practically bouncing in his seat next to his father. Not only were they going out after such a long time, he got to sit in the front seat! He practically wiggled with joy as his father double-checked that he was buckled in. The engine started and the car rolled out of the drive, and with a lenient smile, one that made his cheeks seem even more sallow, the older man allowed his son to flick through the tapes he had in the front of the car. Small fingers selected one, and pushed it into the tape recorder with alarming care.

"Is thes yer favoorite Neji?"

The child giggled cheekily, showing him the case. "The final countdown," the man read in a resigned voice, and then laughed as the small boy began warbling along to the chorus. He allowed himself a few more seconds of dignity, before he joined in as well.

"Whaur wood ye loch tae goo?"

The small, brunet flicked his long hair in his fingers as he considered, sucking on his blackcurrant lolly thoughtfully before coming to a decision. "Th' woods! Tae th' toadstool clearing, Paps, can we?"

Hizashi laughed, as if he already knew that would be the answer. "Neji, Ah haeve a question fer ye."

The large white eyes blinked at him as he slurped on the lolly stick.

"If ye hud a body lest day tae spend wi' me, whit woods we dae?"

"PLAY TH' DOVE GAME!" He screamed immediately, with no prompting needed, excited eyes shining at the man next to him. "We huvnae played it inna mill'yon years Poppa!" The lollypop nearly fell from his open mouth as he waited for his father's answer.

"I guess that's whit we'll do, son," the man replied, and boomed a laugh at the excitable victory dance that ensued. Unbeknownst to the child, he flicked a quick look at the date on the dashboard. The second of May.

The woods were always Neji's favourite place to go. He loved the trees, making a point of rubbing his cheeks against every one of the soft leaves of the low shrubs that he could reach, one hand tightly clinging onto his father's thin one. They tramped through the forest, pointing out pretty coloured birds that darted through the uppermost branches of the tallest trees. Hizashi made Neji giggle with laughter whenever he stumbled, pretending to yell at the hidden roots and calling them funny names, and then when Neji laughed harder, he jumped at him and tickled him, accusing _him_ of tripping him.

Eventually they emerged at the toadstool clearing, nicknamed by the two Hyuugas; a spot where the trees didn't grow and instead formed a nearly perfect circle around a small pond, a manmade one by someone who had discovered the clearing long before the pale-eyed pair had. The mossy carpet, dappled in the sunlight, was speckled by the cream and brown heads of different sized toadstools. Neji hushed the louder man, who paused in his mission to snap every twig in the forest.

"Dae yoo hear that Poppa?" The kid asked him.

"Nae," Hizashi replied, adopting his son's whisper, "Whit is it?"

"It's th' faeries," the mini Hyuuga replied in an even quieter whisper. The two fell silent, and the glassy tinkle brushed past their ears on a gust of wind. High above them on the branch of an oak tree, the older one spotted the flash of a wind chime, glass and metal occasionally clinking together.

"Dae yoo knoo whit ah think?" He murmured in his sons ear. The small child shook his head. "Ah think th' doves are th' faeries friends. Dae y'agree?"

Neji nodded enthusiastically, leaning in to speak into his father's ear. "Th' faeries tauld me that! Did they tell yoo that too?"

Mouth spreading into a smile, he said quietly back, "Dae ye think if we dae th' dove dance, they'll coome oot an' say hello?"

Prompted by his son's fervent nod, he straightened, held his hand out to the tiny version of himself, and together they walked into the clearing. The mottled sunlight warmed patches of their skin as they walked quietly into the clearing, the only sound the trickle of the water and the ballads of the bird calls above them.

"Ur ye ready tae be a dove?" He asked his son gently. A worried expression crossed the small face for a brief moment, the small brows furrowing over innocent eyes.

"Fur th' last time?" He asked his father tentatively.

Hizashi shook his head, a small smile gracing his lips. "Ne'er fur th' last time, Neji."

And with that, he picked up the boy's small body and together they flew around their favourite faery clearing for one last time.

* * *

"Neji…"

The small boy awoke from sleep immediately, stretching tiny limbs. Blearily, he rubbed his eyes and focused on the long brown hair and pale eyes. "Hewwo Uncle Hiashi," he said to the man, yawning widely. "Where's Poppa?"

"Yer faither is sleepin**'**," the man replied with a small smile, "But yoo've got tae gie up noo."

He was rewarded by a slow, sleepy blink. Slowly, Neji looked around him, recognising the room as being his cousins. He was lying on Hanabi's bed, but Hinata's opposite was empty and made, and there was no sign of either of the girls. The clock on the bedside table read '5:41'. The sky outside was gently being warmed by the light cobalt colours of dawn. Neji took another quick look round, and spotted a TV sitting on a low table – a feature that certainly hadn't been there before. He pouted, about to ask why his cousins got a TV when he didn't, when his uncle interrupted his chain of thought.

"Yer faither has one lest thin' tae say tae ye noo, Neji," the man who looked so like his own Poppa said. He pushed the table till it was near the small Hyuuga, turned the TV atop it on and pushed a video tape into the slot. It began rolling immediately, and Hiashi laid the remote by the small boy, who was looking confused.

"Where is Paps?" He asked.

Hiashi, a look of intense pain on his face, tapped the tv. "Jist watch," he murmured, "I'll be ootside."

Dissatisfied with the response, Neji settled to watch the video. The flickering carried on for a little while, and then his father's familiar face flashed onto the screen. "Poppa!" Neji cried in delight, his father was in the TV!

"Neji," came the warm, deep voice, and the child wriggled in delight at this strange new game. It was obviously filmed a while ago, for his father's face was filled out again, and resonated with a healthy flush.

"My son. Lit me say a body thin' first, an' Ah want ye tae always remember thes. Ah love ye. Ye ur mah son, an' th' best son ye hae bin." Neji's stomach filled with a warm pride. "Ah ken thes will come as a shock tae ye, but ye main understand 'at if Ah cood hae avoided thes, Ah wood hae. An' I am sorry fur leavin' ye. Ah jus' hope ye can forgife me."

Neji was filled with confusion. Leaving him? But the television Hizashi was continuing, "I'm jist gonnae finish by sayin' 'at, nae matter whit, ye must forge yer ain fate. Lit nae a body control ye. Ye ur mah son, Neji, an' Ah ken whatever-" A crystalline tear rolled down the pixels of Hiashi's face. Neji heard the patter on the window that indicated rain. His wide eyes were riveted to the screen. "Whatever ye will choose tae be, ye will succeed. Wherever ye ur, Ah will by watchin' ye, mah son, coz I am flyin' wi' th' doves noo. Ah will see ye again, Neji, but fur th' time bein', watch th' doves, an' Ah shaa watch ye back. Ah love ye, Neji."

The tape clicked off, leaving the small child frozen, tears gushing out of his enormous eyes with an unrelenting force. Jerkily, his miniscule fingers reaching out of the tv screen, scrabbling at it, as if trying to wrench his father's image from the black box and back into his life. "Poppa!" He cried, unable to form the words he wanted to say, not having the vocabulary to express what he was feeling. He sank into the duvet, balling it into his face, as he bawled into its soft embrace. "_Poppa!"_

Three hours later, his uncle went into surgery.

* * *

Neji let the tears plop onto the daisies. They trembled under the weight, before they bent and let his sorrow slide into the soil. Later, when he was old enough to understand, it was explained to him why his father had died. He had discovered a brain tumour after bouts of excruciating migraines had him seeking help at the hospital. The cancerous growth had progressed so far that the doctors knew it would not be treatable. They said to him, he had two options. Spend his last few months at the hospital, or at his own home. There would be no difference. A month into this discovery, his brother, Hiashi Hyuuga, received an enormous electric shock grabbing the steel knife Hanabi was poking into an electrical socket. His heart failed several times in the hospital. The life-giving organ was weakened from the electrical surge his body had experienced, the doctors said, and he was diagnosed with a year to live unless he found a donor.

Uncle Hiashi had explained all this to him when he was eleven, crying as endlessly as if he were bleeding from his eyes. Neji had never seen his uncle crying before. Never like this. His hands, which trembled so ferociously it seemed the fingers would shatter, were lying on his shoulders. It felt as if the world were resting its full weight on him.

"Neji."

The tears started, just as they had done that day, when he sat rigidly in front of the black and white static of the TV.

"Y-ye father…mah brother. H-he-" They both sat there, Hiashi's head turned down as he tried to compose himself, Neji's gaze staring straight into the uneven parting of his uncle's dark hair. It was a blander, duller colour than his father's rich, dark cocoa, more like the colour of damp mud. "He left me… his…" The hands on his shoulders slipped away.

"He left ye his heart," Neji whispered to himself, to his uncle, to his father.

Of course, Neji thought bitterly, of course it was just childish fantasy that he could feel his father's heart beating, imagining that he was merely sleeping under the daisies, waiting to wake up and swing him through the air as he pretended he could fly. His father's heart wasn't under him. It was thumping in the chest of the second man who raised him. Even now, the feelings he couldn't quite quell would surge up again. Even though he knew, intrinsically, he knew that there was no way that a brain transplant could have occurred, that there was no way either of the men would have survived it, he still burned inside.

It was a long three years before Neji met Naruto, a long three years of resenting his uncle, damning him and hating him. Hating his father for giving his brother his heart, and not the other way around. Naruto had calmed his mind, made him accept, finally, that his father's heart was still alive and loving him, and loving his brother. His father died, but he saved a life. He kept on loving and living in a way no man had before. _Forge yer ain fate._ And he had. He had done just that, and he had chosen to spend the last day of his life with his son, burning that final moment into his memory like an eternal flame.

Neji leaned forward again, realising that the dusky hues of the day were beginning to darken, and pressed his index finger against the 'z', imprinting it into his flesh. After that, he ran his fingers, as had become his annual tradition, along the smaller carved words: "_Freer in life than any dove was_."

"Ah'm still watchin' Paps. Ur ye?" he asked softly, the words falling off his tongue like they had ever since he had met Naruto. He stood, brushing grass from his cream shorts and white jacket. He always wore white on this day – obeying his father's last request. No black for his funeral. White. For feathers, for freedom. He turned, still in the ring of white stones, and looked to the other side of the enclosed rectangle, where the faint sunken outline of bricks were the only indication that his childhood home had been there. It had been knocked down, at his father's request, in order to create a small graveyard for the village. Hizashi hadn't wanted to be forever in the shadow of a church, and besides, the graveyard at their local one was nearly full. He wanted to be in reach of the splendour of the Scottish downs, ready to fly over them in peace. The entire life savings of Neji's father were left to him, in touch now that he was of age. He would rebuild a life somewhere with them, one that his father would be proud of.

Neji stepped out of the oblong ring of large white stones for the last time that day, and as he did he spotted the small, creamy-pale round head of a toadstool hidden in the shade of one of the rocks.

He was smiling as he left the graveyard, his steps light, heading for The Lion's Hart and his friends that were waiting for him.

* * *

**End: when I wrote 'unrelenting force', my geek brain immediately yelled 'FUS RO DAH', which positively ruined the moment after Hizashi's TV speech. However, that stupid moment did nothing for the fact that I literally cried the whole way through this. Damn these emotions when I'm trying to write!**

**It was a bit sad, I know. I'm sorry. I swear, no more sadness!  
It's likely because I've just been watching the rain drive sideways for about 2 hours. Sad times.  
This is a short-ish chapter. I just needed some clarification of Neji's past. It's out of the way now, so roll on chapter 8!**

**On a lighter note, Happy Diamond Jubilee, Queen! Here's to you xD**

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**Blueneck - Lilitu - check it out! :3**


	8. Chapter 8

**Oh dear god. It's been SUCH a long time. 9 months. That's just a tremendous huge 'oops' on my part.**

**Want to know the stuff that makes me feel like a first class bum? I added 200 words to this chapter and then proclaimed it DONE! I've had over 4000 words just sitting here until today, where I listened to a song that reminded me of this story (for some inexplicable reason it was 'Some Days' by The Maine - a song I've never heard before in my _life.)_**

**And here it is. What I should have uploaded five months ago. Lost all my plot notes too. Then tore apart my room and FOUND THEM! I'll take better care of them now.  
I have a deadline next week, which I'm ignoring. I'm trying my hardest to get back into this mind frame even though earlier I was adamantly telling myself that I hated the stupid guts of this stupid story. But leaving things sitting here unfinished makes me feel ill.  
**

**SO WITHOUT FURTHER ADO  
**

**Disclaimer: if I owned Naruto, I'd probably make more effort to update it more regularly that every nine bloody months.**

**If I have _any_ readers left... I hope you enjoy! :D  
**

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_Previously:_

_Chapter 5: Neji, Gaara, Deidara, Naruto suffer a broken down car and a night in some castley-ruin thing until Minato rescues them.  
Chapter 6: A dive into Gaara's childhood: visiting their father in Yale-New Haven Psychiatric Hospital and all the brutalities Gaara suffered from him leading up to it.  
Chapter 7: A dive into NEJI's past, i.e. the death of his father, Hizashi.  
_

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Gaara ran a hand through the brilliant crimson spikes crowning his head, staring absently into the mirror. The eyeliner was particularly thick that evening; solid black, merciless lines enclosing the dull jade orbs. A ragged breath rattled his ribcages, shaking the bones around in the vast expanse of flesh that was his chest. Behind the smooth, unlined forehead – embroidered with the stains of the tattooed Kanji symbol – black flies were buzzing. They ricocheted off the walls of his skull, seeking a way out. He could feel the bone barriers wearing away, preparing to gush forth the torrent of memories – memories he was fighting to keep at bay.

Teeth gnashing in frustration, the redhead grabbed the corner of the hand towel and crudely tried to fashion it into a lotus flower. The material was too thick though, and the ugly shape twisted into nothing as he roughly forced it into a position. A sharp rap came from outside the bathroom door.

"Gaara?" Temari called through the wood, "You ready to head out?" The light strains of stress were barely evident in her voice, yet still the faintness of it in her words caused another flutter of fear to pool in his stomach.

Realising she was expecting a reply, he let the towel slip slowly from his listless fingers. "Yeah," he grunted.

Another flickering glance in the mirror – nothing had changed – and the redhead was leaving the room. He halted in the doorway, a frown forming across his features. It was an unusual feeling after the blank mask that his face had affixed itself into earlier that afternoon. He glared at the burgundy monstrosity hanging like someone's dead cat from his sister's fingers.

"Get it away from me," he muttered in a voice like gravel.

A sigh emerged from above his hate-filled eye line. "This was an expensive bit of clothing, Gaara," came the tired response.

"I didn't ask you to buy it," the youngest Sabaku retorted emotionlessly. He made to stride past her, but didn't make it a half step when the blonde thrust the cardigan in his way.

"Please?"

The woollen maroon item was snatched from her expectant fingers as the redhead walked towards the front door without another word. The smallest shudder was visible as he slung it on. Teal eyes watched his progress sadly.

XXX

The bottom of the burning circle was beginning to brush the horizon when the Sabakus arrived at the mint-green pub in the heart of the small village. The orange rays of the sun, shining from unusually cloudless and crystal clear sky, gleamed off the pebble-dark slats of the slightly sagging roof. The bell pinged as Kankuro eagerly pulled the door open.

A roar erupted forth the instant the brunet was inside.

"KANK!"

Gaara winced as Temari entered after her brother, lingering for another second in the burnished gold-hued air of the evening as thoughts of a smirking blonde-haired brat filled his mind. Hearing his name being called, he entered as another face flashed abruptly through his mind: one with long chocolate hair and pearl eyes.

"GAARA!"

The wince became more pronounced. "You're wearing my favourite cardigan!"

The redhead skirted around his sister to wedge himself between her and Naruto. No matter how many times he told the prat to damn well fuck off, he just kept coming back for more. Gaara's fingers itched for a good kitchen knife right about now. He'd learned a few days previously – after accidentally eavesdropping on his siblings' conversation, that they wouldn't lift a finger to help him either, as they both though he needed 'the social interaction'. This wasn't interaction, it was sexual harassment, dammit.

A snarl lifted his lips as he felt a surge of animosity to the woman next to him, and he distracted himself by scanning around the room, ignoring the one gleaming blue eye of the blonde trying to attract his attention. Someone was missing.

"C'mere," Naruto beckoned the trio, and they followed him to a large round table in a corner of the pub sitting atop a raised platform. The seats, comprised of one long, circular bench inset into the wood of the wall, were covered with plush cushions in a garish shade of green. The redhead cringed internally at the seemingly boundless bad taste of the establishment.

"Hey Naruto, where's Neji?" Temari asked casually.

The thick blonde eyebrows quirked down over azure eyes. "Oh, well he ran out 'bout half an hour ago." He shrugged at Deidara, "And we don't know where to. He said he'd be back on time though," he added in reassurance, seeing the American's crestfallen expression.

A twinge of annoyance erupted through Gaara's chest, and he cast a quick, irritated glance at his sister next to him.

"Hey sexy."

_Oh kill me now,_ the redhead thought desperately, determinedly ignoring the addition to their side of the table. Long fingers began to toy with the sleeve of his cardigan where his hands were draped motionlessly on the table. He was just about to tug his clothes away when Temari butted in.

"You paint your nails?" she asked in surprise. Pale emerald eyes flicked down to the offending hand as he extracted his sleeve from their grip. The (apparently filed) nails were neatly painted complete black.

"That's gay" he muttered, annoyance heavily coating the words.

"Thank you," the blonde replied seriously. Gaara edged away until his elbows were nearly protruding into his sister's side almost at the same instance as the bell pinged. Temari's ruffled blouse rustled as she leaned forward. Opposite her, Naruto was half-leaning over the back of the bench, peering at the doorway. A tan hand slid through the sunshine-yellow spikes.

"Neji!" He called in greeting as the Scot in question spotted him and made his way over. The dusty rays from the window skimmed over his high cheekbones, dying the marble skin a luminescent gold and glimmering over the russet locks. An eager little shift from the woman next to him alerted Gaara to his sister's excitement. Under his hooded eyes, he allowed himself an eye roll.

"Where'd you go Haggis?" Deidara asked cheerily as the brunet took a seat next to Naruto, opposite Temari.

The long-haired man shrugged out of his cream jacket with a ripple of light fabric. His pale eyes glowed faintly as he appraised the blonde. "Fur a walk," he replied evasively. The pony-tailed man didn't care enough to push. A whisper of an exhalation peeled from the peach lips, before the brunet was yanked into a rough hug by the man next to him. A masculine, blunt-fingered hand tugged through the velvet-soft locks, and with a hiss the brunet jerked away.

"Nae't noo, Naruto," Neji rebuked him, his pale eyes blank even as his eyebrows pinched together once – a barely noticeable movement.

"Neji? Nhat's nup?" the blonde replied in a mockingly nasal voice; earning a sullen glare from the irked Scot. Teeth flashed as the other man beamed.

Opposite them, there was only one person whose eyes were slits of curiosity. Green aquamarine orbs were narrowed in suspicion, the eyelids heavy cream petals above the black lining of the almond shapes they hooded. Gaara pursed his lips just as a looming shape darkened the mahogany surface of the table. A broad, calloused hand came down with a thud on the Scot's shoulder.

"NEJI," came the throaty bellow, which resonated in the air like a nearby thunder clap, "Ah hae prepared th' Larry Special tonecht, fur ye an' yer friends. Unless th' bonnie lass fancies summin' else?" An eyelid, under a bush of coarse orange hairs, clicked shut at Temari. She blushed lightly.

"Nae, tha' soonds gieud, Lar'" Neji replied honestly, offering the imposing man a small, genuine smile. One more clap – the smile flickered like a dying light bulb at the resulting boom – and the beefy Scot was winding his way through the tables again with a surprising grace.

"So, Neji…"

The brunet looked up, but Gaara wasn't paying attention – he was staring with partially concealed distaste at his sister, who had leaned over the table in a clearly obvious attempt to push her cleavage up over the edge of the wood. He lost the gist of the conversation as soon as it started by sly, nimble fingers snatching at his wrists. Gravity betrayed him as his shoulders twisted in an acrobatic fashion and he found himself with his back pressed against the long-haired blonde's lap next to him, his hips twisted in an awkward and marginally painful position. He stared with a gaze tainted by an undercurrent of rage into the deep cobalt blue eye visible under the fringe – the slightest flash under the shampooed curtain of hair the only evidence of a second. Heat against his back, proximity to so much flesh, made the bile rise in his throat. Acid in his jugular. Painful. He writhed, levering himself into a semi-upright position that pulled all his muscles into the wrong positions.

A blistering snarl peeled from his lips as an elaborate pattern of blue triangles danced in his periphery vision. From somewhere, a disembodied sigh petered through the air.

The warmth of male thighs on his back was suddenly gone, the hands enclosing his wrists torn reluctantly from the thin bones there. He was upright, the softness of the pillowed seat snuggling against his back. With a blink, he turned his head slightly to the left without moving his body, like an owl. In front of him, Neji was wrestling Deidara into the seat next to Naruto, and when the blonde finally admitted defeat, the brunet dropped with a weary mumble into the space next to Gaara. A slender-fingered hand patted the crimson hair, lightly butting the thin shell of the ear hidden under the spiky red locks in a reassuring way, like one would stroke a cat.

"He willnae be botherin' ye onie mair. Will ye?" It was added in a cold, flinty voice. An irate grunt was the only reply.

Gaara was spared a reply by the arrival of Larry, bearing platters the size of young children on his tree trunk arms – each laden with every possible Scottish delicacy imaginable. They were set down, spilling small flakes from the battered fish like an avalanche at the impact. The redhead stared at the movement avidly, feeling the bloodlessness of his face and wondering how pale his skin looked. Crisp, new pages fluttered behind his vision, dredged from his memory, and the acid of a bad taste pooled like venom in his throat again. He saw, again, the crest. Yale-New Haven. He felt his skin sour; turn the colour of curdled milk.

"Gaara..?"

He flicked back to present day to catch the concern in deep teal eyes, but his sister said nothing about his lapse and wordlessly pushed a plate in front of him. He looked down, feeling a numbness icing his insides, and took stock. It was a smorgasbord of Scottish cuisine, rich and plentiful, and crowned by his silent favourite – honest to goodness tatties, drowned in a rich, meaty gravy. Gaara's stomach growled before his brain could tell it that all the food it consumed would re-emerge in toxic waste if he ate it. Swallowing the acrid bubble blossoming in his maw, he set about pushing around the food and pretending as if he were eating it.

Not a solid twenty minutes later, the blonde Uzumaki threw down his knife and fork and clapped a hand on his swollen abdomen. "Kankuro!" He yelled in a satisfied, throaty voice. Another clatter indicated the other man finishing just seconds after his friend. A belch was the reply. "Let us," the blonde continued gravely, accepting the burp as a mode of speech, "play pool."

"You're fucking on," the brunet leered at him across the table, and the two bounded up as if they hadn't just eaten enough to keep a small village going for a week. The short-haired blonde grabbed the cuff of Deidara's shirt and dragged him, spluttering apoplectically, along with them.

"Temari!" Naruto called over his shoulder as he dragged the smaller man corpse-style across the carpet. "Come keep count?" Seeing her protesting face, he batted his eyelids in a seductive-pretending-innocent manner, and she caved with an aggrieved grumble. Sliding with an exaggerated wiggle out of the table, she threw a long-suffering sigh in the Hyuuga's direction and pranced over to the trio gathering around the pool table.

It was with slight inner-amusement that Gaara realised Neji's eyes turned away from her almost the second she stepped out of the table. The pearlescent irises instead appraised the redhead's nearly full plate with disapproval.

"Gaara," the rich baritone chastised him, "Yoo've left haf ay yer scran oan yer plate."

The other man looked down too, at the rapidly cooling mulch that was spread about the china. He shrugged listlessly, avoiding eye contact with the Hyuuga.

A fork appeared as he watched, flipped over a barely nibbled hash of bacon and unearthed an untouched new potato cooked with a crispy, herbed skin. The prongs slipped under as he watched in silence, and it was only when the oval earthen root pushed lightly against his lips that his eyes flashed with alarm into those of the Scot. His face was untroubled, one hand propping his head up nonchalantly as the other steadily pushed the potato against the smaller man's mouth with slightly increasing pressure. Almost against his will, Gaara opened his mouth and accepted it.

"Noo, 'at wasnae stoaner was it?"

The redhead uttered a muffled 'mmph' around the mouthful of potato, casting a stony glare at the fork in the Hyuuga's hand. The man put it down, and Gaara resolutely pushed his plate away. A sigh brushed his cheek.

Looking up under his copper lashes, the redhead realised that it wasn't directed him. The brunet's pale eyes were unfocused, staring off into the distance in a detached self-contemplation. Curious, the redhead fought down the question. The past couple of weeks stretched behind him, seeming endlessly long. He watched light gleamed softly off the chocolate locks in his periphery vision, mind clicking slowly. He felt like he'd know Neji a while now. He saw him as… a friend.

Small images flickered by; events solidifying briefly in his mind before they were replaced with new ones: Neji trapping Deidara behind the sofa when he tried to hug Gaara too often, the ever-changing warmth and cynical glances, the flashing white teeth as he laughed. Yes, he was a friend.

The redhead cleared his throat, and felt the immediate attention of the other man. When he turned to look at him, the white eyes seemed pale and bloodless in the orange light of the pub. "So… What's up?" he asked gruffly, feeling awkward.

There was a long second where Neji's expression remained unchanged. Then – slowly – the thin lips spread in a quick, bright smile. Something shuddered deep within Gaara's ribcage. Dropping his head, a fall of brown hair covered his face, and when he spoke his voice was muted and dull. "Soom days ur jist bad ones Ah guess."

A myriad of diseased thoughts stirred, as they always did, in Gaara's head. He felt, with revulsion, that he was not the right kind of person for the brunet to confide in. He was a slug – a plague that should be run from. Ever since he had arrived here, in Scotland, in this strange place, he'd felt more at ease than he ever had before. But that did not mean he was cured. He could not be cured – not when he was the damnation.

However, Neji was sad. Pushing aside the thoughts, as had been so easy these past few weeks, he swallowed to dampen his throat. "I'm a good listener."

There it was – a chuckle!

The Hyuuga lifted his head to the ceiling, the long, elegant nose like an arrow to the heavens. "Oh aye?"

"Yeah," the redhead replied, glad that his voice didn't quiver. Neji doubted him. Of course he did.

The brunet stood up abruptly and strode out of the table, leaving the American sitting, stunned, behind him. Gaara's stomach dropped, squelching even the smallest flare of relief that the man didn't trust him, as he shouldn't, inside him.

Just as he was about to drop his head, defeated, Neji turned slightly. "Com on 'en, laddie," he said patiently.

It took a second for his brain to adjust, and then he was scrambling after the taller man, his heart still struggling to find the right pace. Neji led him toward the back of the pub, past the other members of their group without them even noticing; even Deidara was absorbed in Kankuro and Naruto's overly serious game of pool.

They didn't speak as the brunet pulled open a door at the back, holding it open for his companion. Gaara shuffled behind as they walked silently down the short, sparsely decorated corridor. A couple of doors led off it, but Neji continued to the end, pressing on the metal bar under the green 'Fire Door' sign, and swinging the door open. Cool night air gushed in with chilly suddenness, whipping Gaara's crimson locks across his face.

Outside, the sun had finally sunk below the mountainous skyline. Dewey periwinkle faded into a faint burnt purple at the exact point at which it had sunk, which spread across the sky into soft, magically silken shades of blue. High above them, a couple of the brightest stars were winking into existence.

Pausing for a second at the temperature change, Neji continued down a couple of stone steps and, expecting Gaara to follow, began to walk across the unruly grass of what the redhead now realised must the garden part of the pub. They weaved through squat picnic tables, dozing in the ankle length thistles, until the Hyuuga stopped at a long, wooden bench. There was a small rectangle of darkness on the backrest, but Gaara couldn't pick out any identifiable features. The brunet sat, and indicated for the redhead to follow suit.

They faced the misshapen shapes of the houses of the village; if Gaara were to stretch out a hand, they would be the size of his splayed palm. Bright light shone out of their windows, the occasional snatch of sound from a blaring TV set or radio pervading the air; but on the whole it was peaceful in the garden.

They each sat on one end – Gaara to the left, Neji to the right, a space of one whole person between them. A gibbous moon transformed the blades of grass into a milky white around their feet. There was enough light to pick out the features of Neji's face, but the redhead kept looking forward at the sleepy-looking bungalows, unwilling to be the first to break the silence.

Thankfully, Neji did it for him.

"Mah faither died." It was said in a dull, heavy voice.

Gaara went rigid.

There was a yawning absence of speech ricocheting in the gap between them as Gaara tried to unlock his spine and jaw. It extended into a void, an open chasm between them, one Gaara knew he was going to fall in.

"Sorry," he forced out, his stiffness turning the word guttural and animalistic.

To his complete surprise, the brunet chuckled. "It was a lang time ago laddie, dinnae fret."

"No, I…" The redhead fell silent again. In truth, he had no idea what he was about to say.

"Naruto knows, e'en if he hasnae remembered today." Neji tailed off slightly, his head tipped back as he appraised the stars thoughtfully. "Ah was youn'," he continued suddenly. "Six ur seven." He angled his head to his quiet companion and his eyes creased as he smiled slightly. "Missed oot oan havin' a proper faither," he mused thoughtfully.

Gaara swallowed. "But… Hiashi?"  
"Oh aye, Hiashi was wunnerful. But there's only sae much he coods dae wi' a bairn 'at blamed heem fur his faither's death."

Neji seemed to see the burning, curious question in his eyes without him having to force the words out. With a small, self-directed sigh, like the exhalation of air prepared him for his speech, he told Gaara everything. The words, slow at first, gradually looped together in fluency; rolling and throbbing in his thick northern accent as he explained the trauma of his childhood.

When he finished, the look of relief was so palpable on his face that something bright and hot gushed like molten gold through Gaara's insides.

"Thank ye," the brunet said quietly, silky voice not the slightest bit dry from his story.

"For what?" The redhead asked hoarsely.

A shrug. "Fer listenin'," was the quiet reply.

A silence descended, but it was infinitely more comfortable than the last. After a minute or so of mutual star-gazing, Neji broke it. "Tell me aboot you."

The warm glow left over from the molten waterfall abruptly started to cool.

"Tell me aboot _yer _faither?"

His ribs turned into spines of a cruel trap, lowering over his fleshy, vulnerable vitals like the metal teeth of a bear trap – slicing instead of squeezing, hurting instead of holding. A choked breath was all he managed.

"Gaara?" The Scot tried to see what was going on in the American's expression but the young man's head was twisted ever so slightly away from him. "Ur ye alricht?"

"He's…" the voice rasped, "In a psychiatric hospital."

The brunet sat back, momentarily stunned. "…Wae?"

"He…"

Without warning, the redhead jumped up and half ran back to the pub, stumbling blindly through the entangled web of thistles. He had only just reached the last picnic table before the pub when his bicep was caught in the strong grip of the brunet – whose long legs and evident practice saw him at ease with wading through the overgrown mess.

"Gaara," he said softly.

Jade eyes flashed up to meet his gaze in alarm. Neji saw the haunted look that presided deep within them, a look that until now had been present, but never bared to the front before. They dropped quickly to the ground.

"I want to go back inside," the redhead said quietly.

"Alrigh'," Neji conceded, still in the gentle tones; as if Gaara were a timid mouse he were trying to befriend, "Le's goo then."

As they entered the pub again, a sullen-faced Deidara spotted them immediately. "Where the _hell_ have you been!" he screeched, lunging from his seat and wrapping his arms around Gaara, pulling him a few feet away from the tall brunet with a malevolent scowl.

His face quickly darkening to match, the brunet took a step towards the blonde and his scared-looking prisoner. "Dei, whit haeve I _told _ye aboot smotherin' Gaara!"

The blonde man let go with obvious reluctance at the look of pure murder clouding the pale face, and Gaara shrugged away from him with relief. Pearl eyes met green for the briefest second before the redhead turned away and slouched over to sit next to Temari.

Once Gaara was out of earshot, Neji turned to the blonde man with a scowl. "Deidara, if ye knoo whit's guid fer ye, ye'd lay off Gaara, ye hear me?"

The blonde had a face as thunderous to match. "Well _you_! _You_ can stop leading him on as well, un!" With a haughty sniff he stalked away, ponytail swinging agitatedly behind him.

After a long second, Neji, sucking in a deep, sharp breath, followed.

A couple of hours later, and Kankuro and Naruto were still knocking balls into the holes with an alarming energy. Temari was dozing on the end of the couch, stray tendrils of straw-coloured hair splayed across her face. On the other end perched a solemn-faced Gaara, whose eyes looked dull and sunken in his kohl-lined lids. He was resolutely ignoring the fixed gaze of the long-haired blonde man, who was curled up like a cat on the footstool next to Temari. On the other side of the pool table, pale eyes absent-mindedly traced the contours of the broad back twisting over the pool cue.

"Yes Naruto!" Kankuro exclaimed eagerly as the ball popped neatly in the hole. The blonde offered him a smug grin.

The pub was slowly emptying, and the hum of relaxed, quietly drunken idle chatter permeated the warm fug of the air. Next to the window, an elderly man with calloused brown hands flicked the end of a cigarette onto the sill. Darkness pressed softly against the thick, warped glass of the windows, and the small orange balls of light spiralled in the whorled pattern.

There was a roar that broke these ease a few seconds later, ands Temari startled awake.

"What the?!"

Kankuro collapsed next to her with an exaggerated groan. "I lost."

"Oh dear," Temari mumbled mockingly, and pulled her phone out of her pocket. "Crap, is that the time!"

Kankuro pouted. "I don't want to go!"

"Tough."

The squabble seemed seconds away from commencing when a trilling ringtone warbled through the air.

"Hello?"

Even Gaara looked over at Naruto. His normal drawl was slightly too rushed and breathless. A pink flush had appeared in spots on his cheekbones.

"Yeah… Yeah? Yeah. Hang on!"

He put the ball of his hand on the bottom of the mobile and whispered to the crowd: "be a minute!" He returned the phone to his ear and walked to sit in one of the booths out of earshot. Temari and Kankuro stared after him.

"Girlfriend?" Kankuro winked at Deidara.

The blonde yawned. "No fucking clue!"

Gaara was staring at the Hyuuga. His eyes were pebbles of white rock; cold and baleful. His mouth was a line as he glared at the empty pool table, and his face was as blank as a white canvas. His skin seemed too pale: as if all the blood and warmth had been removed from his body.

"Hey, guys!"

Naruto's distinctive shout hailed them. He sounded excited; when they looked over at him, his expression was gleeful. "Fancy going on a road trip?"

"A-YESSS!" Kankuro was on his feet, his black hood flying around as he dashed over to his friend. "For what! To do what!"

They pranced together for a second. Gaara noticed that Naruto still clutched the phone to his ear. As he watched, he pulled it away, a caller ID blinking off the screen, and a frown worked across his face – then he slid it back in his pocket and slung an arm around Kankuro, smiled back.

"Concert tickets, my friend. CONCERT tickets!"

The redhead sunk down in his seat. Repulsion overwhelmed him. No way.

"For ALL of us!"

He audibly groaned. Across the pool table, Neji, eyes dark, stood and strode out of the pub. He clicked the door softly closed behind him, and his figure rippled across the warped windows and out of sight. An uncomfortable silence fell.

Kankuro looked sheepish. "Is he annoyed at me?"

"Don't think so, no." Naruto's voice was suddenly several decibels too quiet.

Gaara had had enough. He shrugged on his coat, walked past the group members, and stepped out into the night. He stuck his hands deep into his pockets and slouched home, the opposite way to the troubled Hyuuga.

_Concert tickets. Psh. _

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**Cor. That was probably a memory jogger. Any guesses on Naruto's mystery phonecaller? **

**I PROMISE this next chapter will be here sooner!**

**Pinky promise. Honestly! :sweatdrop: ^_^;;;**


	9. Chapter 9

**I literally have no idea what I'm doing with this story any more! Is Gaara some kind of twisted, abused and disturbed maniac? Or is he lapsing into sweet innocence?! It feels like it's been so long since I started this story that I don't know what I was originally intending any more! (Over a year, whoa, that's a long time for me.)**

**And yet, I will finish this even if it kills me. Even if it makes NO sense, what-SO-EVERRRRR!**

**Disclaimer: If I owned Naruto, I'd be better at holding a plot together than I actually am.**

**Enjoy!**

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Boxie stalked through ferns and grass in her sleep. Gaara could tell because she was twitching, her claws unsheathing and snagging in the towel they'd folded in a cardboard box as a makeshift bed.

It was raining outside. Not raining: positively crying an unbroken sheet of water that covered the Scottish Dales in endless pools of rainwater. The unbroken grassland behind their rented cottage was turning to marsh. Their cobbled path had turned into what resembled a small river down which small twigs tossed like ships in a stormy sea. Gaara sat at the double glass door looking onto the patio. The drumming was half reassuring – but mostly sad. Heart-breakingly mournful.

The redhead felt moisture in his eyes, and he blinked it back. Quickly, he dispelled the image of Neji's lithe figure stalking from the pub on the Sunday evening. It seemed, nauseatingly enough, that tears had been not far from his eyes the past two days. It sickened him. He'd long ago learnt: tears were weakness.

It was Tuesday. He left on Sunday. Nearly a month had been spent in Scotland, but the end was looming. Yale-New Haven's letter called, muffled and shrill, from where it had been stuffed in Temari's bag. His father waited.

Still, the rain fell. Fell as if it didn't care who or what it drenched.

Something bobbed through the rain. Distinct long blonde hair plastered to a face half hidden by the collar of his raincoat. The figure disappeared from Gaara's sight, and three frantic raps sounded on the door. Temari's slipper-muffled footsteps sounded past the door to the living room. Gaara's head turned slightly, following the sound. He shifted marginally in his cross-legged pose on the floor; debating whether to run.

"Temari, un!"

"Deidara!"

Gaara ran. Later, sitting in a nest of his duvets and pillows, Temari came into the room with a small, handheld suitcase and began dragging clothes from his wardrobe.

"What are you doing?"

"What?" Temari turned to him, "Stop grunting Gaara, I can't hear you. Now get over here or I'm packing whatever I touch first."

Gaara's complexion went from pale to green to ash grey faster than a set of traffic lights. His stomach fell down a ravine with no bottom, lurching and tossing like a dinghy in a thunderstorm in a whirlpool. No? Not yet? Not this soon?

"We've got to drive to Leeds! _Leeds!_ That's where this thing is at!" Temari was grumbling. "That's like, an 8 hour drive!"

Slowly, Gaara calmed. "What?"

"That was _my_ response too! What! Anyway, take a few tops and some nice jeans and something warm. We're leaving in half an hour." She hurried out.

Relief fluttering, Gaara assumed Temari's pose and lifted the badly folded piles of clothes. He extracted a burgundy pair of skinny jeans and dropped them into the open mini-suitcase at his feet. Next went a loose black t-shirt and a several-sizes-too-large jumper – unprofessionally stitched, with a white outline of a sheep on the back. He pulled it on over his grey jeans as it wouldn't fit in the suitcase.

"Gaara!" Temari's head appeared round the door, "I lied, we're leaving now." She stuck out her hand for the case and Gaara handed it over silently. "Come on. Hop to it!

He was all but dragged from the house and down the uneven drive to where a hired mini-van lurked. Deidara had slunk back, and was wringing his long locks out in one of the seats inside. Naruto looked at home in the front seat, flashing a grin over at the Sabaku's as the temporary misted drizzle threatened to turn into a full scale downpour on their heads again.

"Shots on the front seat!" Kankuro launched himself into it and wrestled the blond into a hug.

Temari slid more demurely into the seat next to Deidara at the back, who fussed over her damp hair with his towel in a very camp kind of way. Face dark, Gaara slid into the empty seat behind Neji and pushed his ipod in.

They were immediately yanked out by his sister. "Naruto is speaking," she growled.

"Easy on the kid, Temar!" Naruto laughed. "Now folks, first night we crash, second night we're apparently going clubbing, third night concert. Ya hear me!"

Gaara stuffed his earphones back in and slumped in his seat.

Over the thrashing of the guitar and bass, he heard Temari's whining, "Don't be a grump all of this trip, Gaara!"

Pretending he hadn't heard, he watched Naruto's heavily muscled arm nudging Kankuro in a friendly way as he rolled of the curb and set off through the increasing rain.

It was luck that he managed to fall asleep for a good part of the journey, earphones vibrating with the volume of the music. He woke for long enough to catch the end of an intense game of cards with Temari, Deidara and Neji sniping each other; Kankuro twisted in his seat to watch. He was dragged into a game, which lasted long enough to see them to a petrol station.

Neji was becoming more subdued as the journey went on, and Scotland disappeared behind them. The sun was out when they stepped out to stretch their legs at the rest station, and Kankuro joyfully ran to the McDonalds with the hollering spiky-haired blonde in tow. Deidara yelled his order after them.

Neji stood apart, the bright rays turning his skin into unblemished alabaster. His eyes were clouded, stared up at the sky in an impassive mask. He refused the Big Mac the grinning Naruto tried to pass him, and folded himself back in the mini-van to wait for them. Not hungry, Gaara followed suit. This time, he sat next to the brunet, and the hours began to pass in a comfortable silence as Gaara drifted again.

When he roused, groggy and bad-tempered, the atmosphere in the minibus was starting to change. Everyone was awake; even Kankuro, who'd been snoozing off his fast-food meal. Deidara was restless and drumming his fingers relentlessly on the car door handle until Neji, who had been silent up till then, slapped his hand away with a sharp rebuttal.

"Twenty minutes, folks!" Naruto called cheerfully from the driver's seat.

Gaara shifted in his seat. His stomach clenched, constricted under the seatbelt that was clearly for a larger frame – it dug under his chin. The redhead was feeling prickly and warm and nauseous. They were in Leeds now, and the buildings looked dank and synthetic, like polystyrene and cardboard approximations of the cottages in Altnaharra. People scuttled along the chewing-gum splattered pavement clutching thin plastic bags emblazoned with common high street brands. Not a Wal-Mart in sight – they were blue and red logos, beginning in 'T', or a shade of orange that didn't know whether to be tangerine or peach, starting 'S'. There were boutiques and co-ops side by side. Traffic lights let people cross the roads. The minibus stopped at one, and Gaara watched the people hurrying past. They all wore summer clothes but carried anoraks. One woman had a collapsible umbrella swinging on her wrist. They were clearly expecting rain.

The sky wasn't overcast, but filled with fat white clouds, greying at the temples like old men. Spots of azure blue peeked through in gaps. Back in San Francisco, the sky would be unbroken blue. Back in Scotland, it would be raining. Gaara sighed. He hated change.

"Nearly there!" Naruto's disembodied voice reassured them.

Their lumbering vehicle navigated the warren of Leeds smoothly. Before long they had pulled into a private carpark – which Naruto had to point a remote at to open the gates to get in – and climbed out. They traipsed onto the streets; everyone chatting tiredly. Gaara walked in silence. The air still nipped a bit. Gaara pulled his jumper into his body and stared incredulously at a group of girls strolling past in shorts.

"Crivvens, it's warm haur, isnae't!" Neji exclaimed to the short American. Gaara looked on in wonder as the Scot peeled off his hoodie and draped it over his arm.

"Are you mad?" He asked in quiet shock.

The Scot winked at him, and Gaara blushed. "Ah'm Scottish, laddie, Leeds is a-verrae hot fur meh."

"Stripping already Neji?"

The man's face immediately lost its expression, and he flicked a shrug and a half-smile at Naruto, and then watched the cracks on the pavement.

The redhead stared at his feet as well and followed the swish of Temari's skirt in front of him.

The block they were heading to – five minutes away from the private carpark – was tall and a professional off-white. As they entered, Gaara stared at the grey swirls in the black marble unfeelingly.

"Christ, un," Deidara said appreciatively.

"Yeah," Naruto agreed in mock-awe. His voice was slightly off; croaky, like he'd swallowed a boiled sweet whole. "Sasuke!"

Finally, Gaara looked up. The room they stood in was an art deco cross between classic and modern. The walls were a light, smoky grey, and rouge furniture was scattered lushly in pockets in the large plaza. There were orange and white lillies in artfully twisted vases on the surfaces and abstract colourful paintings in bronze frames across the walls. Huge windows with black silks drapes let in light. Leaning against a Greek-style pillar off to one side of the plaza was a man looking for all the world like he'd just strolled in from a fashion shoot, as clichéd as that sounded.

"Naruto," the voice from the pale throat drawled.

A grin stretched the blonde's face. "Hey man!" His voice was normal again. "Why are you so dressed up?"

Gaara detected the eye roll even across the plaza. "I've just been in a shoot for a fashion magazine."

_Typical, _said a little voice in Gaara's head.

"These are your…Scottish friends?" The drawl was closer. The well-dressed man – Sasuke – was strolling forward, fingertips in the pockets of his creaseless, silken designer trousers.

"American, actually," Naruto announced proudly.

Gaara looked at Temari. Her eyes were threatening to explode out of her skull. Next to her, Kankuro was badly disguising a yawn.

"Neji."

The Scot's pale grey eyes were hooded, but he nodded with a blank look on his face. "Sasuke. You look well."

The raven-haired man had a subtle look of rivalry on his face, but he masked it under a practiced, crooked smile. "And you."

Gaara didn't like Sasuke.

He had decided this shortly after meeting him. Sasuke had _everything_.

They sat on the leather sofas in his condo at the top of the building – 'Uchiha Apartments', Naruto informed them, after his late, affluent father who provided the funding for the project.

Sasuke's condo was very modern. Everything was white and steel and flecked with red. He even had small rubies inlaid into his oven door handle for god's sake.

There were few photos, but the ones Gaara spotted made him feel like he was intruding on some aspect of the raven's childhood just by looking at them. A group shot had pride of place on the table next to the Uchiha's monstrous queen-size. Gaara spotted it through the gap in the door before Sasuke closed it.

A blonde boy, and one with dark, spiky locks who were clearly Sasuke and Naruto. A pink-hair girl beamed in the middle. They all wore long, dark robes and square graduation hats. Behind them, a tall man with long, spiky grey hair leant on a crutch and appeared to be smiling at them behind a mask which covered his mouth, and a dark bandage which covered one eye.

There was another picture of the pink-haired girl. She looked a few years younger, and she smiled at the camera on a bench covered in sakura blossom, pointing at the branches above her. Gaara noticed Naruto touching the frame lightly as he entered, not even looking down at it; like he knew exactly where it would be.

The redhead wondered why, but didn't ask.

The atmosphere was more subdued than previous times in the Sabaku's rented cottage. Now, the energy came from slightly different sources – like a lightbulb had blown and been replaced with a different one. The light was slightly different, and Gaara could see why. Naruto was radiant, as per usual. He sat next to Sasuke and kept the conversation going with enthused comments and stories. Sasuke smirked and 'hn'd. Kankuro, after consuming half of Sasuke's wholesome food, was loudly proclaiming the need to go out and buy junk food. Deidara, surprisingly unawed by the raven's beauty, was still haranguing Gaara. Temari's replies were fluttery and flirty.

And Neji was silent. His thumbnail worked at a hole in the jumper he'd put back on. The redhead had no idea why Sasuke's apartment was so chilly until he saw the aircon on in the corner. Gaara, whose tongue had seized up and stuck to the roof of his mouth again, uttered no syllable. He just watched Neji's hole widening and widening until the thumb burst through it.

"Right!" exclaimed Naruto so loudly that Deidara nearly rolled off his seat. "Let's go eat!"

"Where, dumb shit?" the raven-haired man snerked.

He was still attractive, Gaara admitted begrudgingly. Flawless skin. Deep, cynical eyes. Thin lips which twisted up into a smirk as though it was their natural position. Elegant fingers and a slender, tapered form.

"Yeah, let's, un! Where's best to eat, duckbutt?"

Duck…butt.

Gaara let rip an unattractive snort before he could help himself, and he quickly flushed in mortification. Everyone turned to stare at him. Sasuke's eyes were slits of displeasure – it was clearly a raw nerve.

Suddenly, Neji started laughing.

It was a deep, sonorous, Scottish laugh that resonated from the pit of his stomach, and it raised hairs on Gaara's neck. Temari gave a surprised giggle, and then a short cackle before shestopped too, looking embarrassed. Temari's true laugh was not pretty. Deidara offered a dry snort of laughter and Naruto let out a hearty chuckle before bounding up and dragging the unresponsive Sasuke with him.

"Come on, come onnn!"

With a sigh, the Uchiha smoothed his clothes. "Fine."

* * *

Gaara stared up at the restaurant with consternation. It was mirrored in the face of Kankuro as well, albeit a slightly slower, slack-jawed expression.

"They sell fast food?"

"No." Sasuke replied shortly, gliding effortlessly up the marble-and-silver steps to the elegant restaurant. "They serve haute cuisine."

"That a kind of burger?" Kankuro asked Naruto as they entered the shimmering establishment.

Passing through the steel and glass doors, Gaara was acutely aware of Neji tagging behind, his face cast downwards. Worry pinched his gut.

"Cool, they have fish here?!" The eldest male Sabaku leaned over to tap the tank.

"They're lobsters, Kank." Temari's tone didn't hide the acute annoyance at her brother's stupidity.

Gaara was only vaguely aware of the conversation as the raven-haired man exchanged a quiet few words with a woman wearing an austere, manager's uniform. He pointed at the tank, and two crisply-dressed waiters moved forward to scoop the lobsters out of the water.

A confused wail from the other Sabaku brother. "What, where are they taking them?"

Dinner passed in an expensive haze. Gaara picked at the microscopic portions; hid the medium rare triangle of steak under a seasoned bay leaf. Desert came on a spoon – designed to be taken in a mouthful. The redhead tipped it onto Kankuro's plate.

Later, in one of the coldly modern spare bedrooms of the Uchiha's condo, Gaara rewatched Neji's thumb bursting through the sleeve of his jumper in his mind. The sheets were stiff and chilly. Slowly, he let himself sink into a shallow nightmare, where he watched his father's bloody, decapitated head roll, grinning, into his bedroom over and over again.

"WHAT IS THIS?!"

Gaara exploded into wakefulness, his heart thudding – both from the nightmare and the blood-curdling scream. He glanced at his alarm on the glass bedside table. 9:01. He'd been asleep for approximately 23 minutes.

With a heartfelt grumble, he slid out of bed and poked his nose through the door. He could see the back of Naruto's head, the shirtless back broad and tanned. A thin, wiry scar that Gaara had never before noticed rippled over his shoulder muscles. In front of him, face visible and bearing an expression of complete outrage, was Kankuro, waving a cereal box like a weapon.

"I wouldn't even feed my dog this!"

"You have a dog?" Naruto asked in confusion.

"If I _did_ have a dog!"

"Kank, it's just muesli," the blonde sighed in exasperation, "It won't kill you."

The other Sabaku cast a distinctly distrustful look at the box. "No cocopops?"

The blond head dipped – Gaara assumed he was rubbing his face in his hands. "Sasuke, remember Sasuke?"

A blink from Kankuro. "Uh, yeah?"

"Does he _look_ like the kind of guy who would have cocopops in this house?" Hidden behind the door, the eavesdropping redhead nodded. No, he did not.

It was clear Kankuro didn't understand, but he was spared a reply by a moody, sexual snarl from the bedroom.

"What is with the goddamn _noise _at this time."

"Shit, now you woke him up!" It was a hiss Gaara barely just caught.

The owner of the voice was hidden from his from his restricted view, but the soft sound of bare feet on cold floor preceded the elegant figure's arrival on the scene.

"Here." Sasuke handed Kankuro a twenty pound note. "Go and buy whatever you want. There's a shop on the lower level."

"Awesome!" Immediately perked up, the man vanished from the apartment with the loud sound of a slamming door. The two in the kitchen were alone. An uncomfortable prickling came over the nape of Gaara's neck as he wondered if he was going to bear witness to something he'd rather not.

The raven walked over to Naruto, looking down on him slightly.

"Still taller than me huh?" A rueful smile on the blond's face.

"Of course, moron."

"Hey," Naruto's face darkened into a scowl, "I thought we'd grown out of this." His back still turned to Gaara, the redhead watched as the other man walked round to face him. A hand slipped onto his bare shoulder, slid down and traced the line of the scar on Naruto's back.

"Still there, then." Sasuke's voice was less husky at the sober statement.

"Scars don't go away, duckie." Sasuke was matched for solemnity by the other man. "You know that."

"Yeah, well I don't take naked photos all that often."

"What a lie." There was a dark sexuality in the smile in Naruto's voice. Onyx eyes, flashing black, bore a penetrating hole into the blue eyes that Gaara couldn't see.

"Come back to bed," was all the raven-haired man said, and walked back to the out-of-sight door to the bedroom.

"Always so demanding!" Naruto called after him, but he followed without complaint.

Just as Gaara pulled the door closed and climbed back into bed, he caught a flash of pearl, and then a door on the other side of the kitchen gently closed.

Another nightmare later, Gaara threw off his covers in an almost-strop and rolled out of bed. 9:53. He emerged from the bedroom, rubbing the dried sleep from his eyes, to be confronted with Kankuro wearing a black apron and wielding a spatula. He looked up as Gaara stopped to stare.

"Pancakes?"

"Sure." The redhead sat at the black-marble surface of the island in the kitchen as Kankuro slipped a thin pancake on a plate and shoved half a lemon and a pot of sugar over to him. To his credit, his brother knew his tastes in sweets.

"Neji, pancakes?"

Gaara jumped as the brunet materialised over his shoulder and sat down. "Aye."

He looked terrible. Skin flawless as ever, but his lids sat low over his eyes and his silken hair was knotted, as if he'd been tugging his fingers through it.

They were quickly joined by Deidara, and then Temari. Sasuke and Naruto emerged last, fully dressed and showered. The blond eagerly sat down to pancakes, but the dark-haired man, wearing a crisp, navy blue shirt, strode off to take a call and lean against the floor-ceiling windows like a modelling businessman.

Gaara dripped some more lemon on the sliver of pancake left and surreptitiously watched Neji, who was pushing his own around the plate.

"Sasuke, fuck's sake, come and have some breakfast."

The man disconnected his call and slid his black iPhone into his pocket. "I hate pancakes."

"I'll make you!"

"Mm hm." He walked over and stood at the stove, taking the spatula from Kankuro and dismissing him. He slid the next onto Naruto's plate and then turned the stove off. "Cleaning lady will be in soon. We're going shopping." He eyed the rest of the people in his kitchen. "I don't care who else comes."

His tone made it clear that he didn't want anyone coming.

"I want to shop!" Deidara, either oblivious or uncaring, scarfed down his honey-lathered slice of batter and dashed into his room to change.

"Me too!" Temari followed the openly gay man, racing him to the shower.

"As long as we have a takeaway afterwards," Kankuro mused thoughtfully, "then, awesome."

"Neji?" Naruto beamed at him, but his only response was a rolling shrug.

The blond was a force to be reckoned with, was Gaara's surly mental mutter as they all sat in the Uchiha's chauffeured limo-car a little while later.

Sasuke didn't really chatter, but he was leniently answering Naruto's questions as they neared the shopping centre.

"I'll be out of here soon," he was saying, "this space is only temporary. I'm only here to work on a business course until I can move somewhere."

"Where?" Naruto was sat slightly too close to the man, their knuckles brushing as the car turned sharp corners.

"Likely London, hopefully New York."

"So far!"

Gaara noticed the wide grin on Naruto's face was completely fake.

"I can't live forever in the shadows of my father and brother. We're here."

They all got out. The shopping centre was not as shiny as the restaurant and apartment had been, but it was still fairly upmarket.

"Let's split!"

Deidara was gone, tugging Temari in the direction of the shoes.

"Kankuro!" The only woman called after her brother, "I'll buy you ice cream if you come with and save me from this maniac!"

The face-painted man was gone.

The four men left stood there, until Sasuke sauntered off. "Do what you want, Neji," he threw in an offhandedly snide tone over his shoulder, Naruto following behind with his arms stretched behind his head, and they disappeared into the centre.

Feeling awkwardness crawling into his chest, Gaara looked at the silent man next to him. His face was a storm, roiling and harmful and dark.

"Um…" He rocked forwards, stared intently at a still-wet glob of gum, which gleamed in the light.

"Coffee?"

Startling, Gaara looked back at the man. Wide, bright eyes looked back, the blankness masking the look of distaste and anger replaced with Neji's normal, kind expression.

"Yeah, that'd be… nice."

Something about spending the day predominantly with Neji had set off a weird fluttering in Gaara's heart that made his heartbeat feel as fragile as a bird's. Yet at the same time, he recognised that the Neji that sat opposite him, sipping his cappuccino and lightly bantering with him, was not the easy, casual, laughing man he met that first time in Scotland. There was something pinched in the Scot's face; a pain that Gaara wasn't sure would go away.

They met with the others for lunch, and then Gaara was split from the brunet to go around with his siblings. He caught himself missing the man, and then wondered which Neji it was that he missed. This sad one he was seeing more and more of late, or the one from Scotland who massaged the head of an American stranger in a pub one day?

There was an acute difference between the two, he'd come to realise, and it was a change in personality that hurt him in a way that none had since he'd seen his father gift toys to his siblings, and then destroy the toys that Gaara inexpertly made himself out of wool and twigs. People, he realised, were ever-changing. It reminded him of the world he'd tried to get away from all those years ago. He sunk into quiet reflection on the trip back to the Uchiha apartments before the clubbing, unsure of himself in the growing realisation of what Neji saw in Naruto.

* * *

The bass was palpable from a street down from the club. It resonated in the air, sending rumbling vibrations through the seats of the sleek Uchiha cars. Gaara miserably allowed himself to be dragged from the vehicle by Temari. Her fists formed iron vices around his wrist, and Neji's.

The Scot allowed himself to be the blonde's hostage only grudgingly. His expression sour and moody, he alternated glaring at the floor, and then at the brushing shoulders of Naruto and Sasuke as they walked down the LED-illuminated tunnel-entrance to the club.

Gaara allowed himself one quick glance over at the Scot. Garbed in storm-grey skinny jeans and a loose-fitting, soft white top, his dark locks spilling freely over his shoulders, he looked every inch a model from the Abercrombie and Fitch bag Sasuke had brought back from shopping with Naruto. The man had tried to convince Sasuke that dressing in an orange tracksuit combination was acceptable; and the scowl that the Uchiha had given him had almost frozen hell over.

Now, the suddenly docile blond was wearing tight jeans and a hugging black top that clung to the muscles of his chest.

"VIP party of seven. Please go right through, Mr Uchiha."

Gaara fought the urge to roll his eyes at the typicality. The club was dark inside; they passed a roiling, surging crush of people on the dance floor on the way to the VIP lounge. The air tasted dark, and was laced with heat and sweat and the lushly heavy smell bodies make when they grind together.

Gaara found it all sickening.

"Mr Uchiha."

A burly man wearing a smart tux and an impractical pair of mirrored sunglasses pulled a thick drape back to the small, exclusive lounge. It was lit with dim, coloured lighting. Plush seating deep enough for a grown man to lie comfortably on encircled a darkly gleaming table. A self-served bar was in the corner. The floor was thick carpet.

Sasuke spoke with the bodyguard, and a bartender materialised almost immediately in the room with the drinks. The first round came out in tall glasses in exotic pinks and limes, with citrus slices sliced on the rims.

"We'll start civilised," Sasuke quipped, sneering at Naruto, "And then we'll go dirty."

The blonde in question gave a forced laugh, and proceeded to chug his drink down until he choked. Kankuro watched him with wide eyes. "Whoa, Naruto, slow down, we've got all evening!"

The man gave him a weak smile, before he grabbed the Uchiha's arm. "Come on, Sasuke!"

He dragged him out.

"Gaara, dance?" Deidara's voice was optimistic. The redhead crushed him with a single look, and a bright, blue eye shuttered in a defeated wink, before he too vanished from the VIP lounge.

"Deidara! Don't leave me with Temari!"

Kankuro gave chase.

"Hey! Kankuro, you _asshole_!"

Temari dived after him.

The silence that fell in the dark, private room was absolute. "Tae mair ay th' green drunks," Neji muttered to the bartender. Outside, the bass throbbed until Gaara's heart slowed to the pounding of the beat. "Here."

Gaara downed the drink; winced at the unpleasant spice in it. "What the hell is that?"

"Fire vodka." Neji's voice was slowly sounding normal; his re-found, casual nonchalance a relief after the cold silence of the last day.

"Please never give it to me again."

The Scot laughed suddenly, and his tense shoulders released their tension. "Dae ye bevvy much?"

The language was becoming like a spare limb to Gaara now; completely useless, but he was coming to understand how it worked.

"I don't drink at all."

"Nae?" He sounded surprised.

There was a light fuzz at the very back of Gaara's brain. "Not really my thing."

Neji stared down at the half finished elegance of the glass in his hand. "Poncy lassie drinks, these," he said in disgust, "Gezz us a swally onie day."

Gaara laughed. "A what?"

Neji winked easily. "Beer, lass, th' prop'r mince."

While Gaara pulled back the flap to stare at the rippling crowd – the bass hammering into his chest – Neji ordered another cocktail and pushed it into his hand.

"Micht an aw make th' most ay th' free lassie drinks," he said under his breath, voice sour.

Not knowing how to reply, Gaara downed the drink, winced again at the sour taste of apples, and followed Neji out of the secluded area. Luminous steps led down into the dance floor. Gaara could spot pocketed alcoves where bodies coiled around each other in a sinuous dance. "Is this an expensive club?"

"Oh aye, lad," was Neji's dark answer, "Whaur ye fin' th' warst fowk."

"The worst people?" Gaara had spotted a head of electric blond hair flashing odd colours in the strobe lighting, pushed into the alcove. An expensively outfitted, darkhaired male had him pinned against the wall.

Neji had spotted it too. "Aye." The word was filled with bitterness. "Rich assholes."

And with that, he had descended the steps and burrowed into the seething crowd.

"Nej—!"

He was gone.

"Shit." Gaara spun around. The club was so dark, that he could see no one he knew, and the crush of people was overwhelming. In the crowded place, he felt alone. The only option was to dive into the throng where he had last seen Neji's lithe, tall figure vanish, and hunt him down.

Gaara was only just down the steps when someone grabbed his ass firmly. He yelped and darted away from the laughing figure behind him. "Where ya going, sweetheart?"

"Neji…" the redhead whimpered, inserting himself into the crowd and struggling to part the gyrating, glistening bodies. In his efforts to wiggle in between a grinding couple, he sent a cup of amber liquid flying.

"HEY!"

A scared flick of his eyes over his shoulder, and the thick-chested man was barrelling through the crowd towards him. A shrill cry escaped by accident, and then strong arms were pulling him to safety.

"Nej-"

Out in the somewhat open, he looked up, and noticed that his saviour was _definitely_ not Neji. The figure was just as tall, but his short hair was a deep black that was so shiny, it reflected the colours of the lights until it gleamed with the sensual colours. A discreet gel had been applied to the sleek locks, so that the fringe rumpled in a windswept manner. The stranger's eyes were large, hooded with drunken lashes and rimmed with a kohl-black eyeliner.

"Come here, lost sheep."

He was led to the bar and seated at one of the high stools. "Round of drinks for my companion." The cup, far larger than the tapered glass in the VIP lounge, was pushed in front of him. "Drink, friend."

Gaara took a sip, to be polite. "Sorry…who are you?"

The steady gaze didn't move off him when he spoke. "Lee. And you are?"

Gaara appraised Lee's attire. The man was surely as skinny as a rake, but khaki cargo pants with their straps and many pockets did a good job of beefing him out. A loose vest top clung to his shoulders, and his arms were defined with sinewy muscles.

"Gaara."

"Well Gaara, you shouldn't look like such a lost sheep in this crowd." Lee took a sip of his own drink. "People prey on boys like you."

"I'm not a boy," Gaara said quietly.

Lee smiled widely, his teeth glittering attractively in the light. "I know."

Feeling troubled, the redhead cast his eyes over the crowd, looking for Neji's chocolate brown locks. They were conspicuously absent. The entwined pair of raven and blond were gone from the alcove too.

Suddenly, Gaara felt so alone.

"Another?"

He turned to see Lee smiling at him, reaching forward to take his empty cup.

"Alright then."

Lee laughed at his offhand expression, and Gaara found himself laughing with him. "Come." The man extended a hand. Gaara took it, and Lee led him into the crowd.

Sometime later – Gaara wasn't sure how much time had passed – a part of his conscious that had been hazed and foggy snapped to wakefulness. He found himself in the press of the crowd he had been so scared about, sweaty arms rubbing against his own. Moisture had flattened his fringe to his forehead and heated his face.

A chest was flush against his own, and when he inclined his head towards the owner of it, Lee's lidded eyes were staring at him; his irises lush black under his thick eyelashes.

Arms were around him, gripping his ass, and tugging and squeezing it. A third hand slipped under his shirt to stroke his back.

Gaara knew what had brought him back to conscious thought. He was pressed between two bodies – the one in front Lee's, the one behind unknown, but distinctly man. A rigid bulge pushed against the base of his spine as the hand snuck around to caress his nipples.

The redhead sucked in a sharp, angry breath. The stench of sweat clogged his nostrils.

"Lee, I need to get out," he mumbled.

"What? But baby, we're having so much fun, and you only just got here." The man's tone was reproachful.

"I'm too hot." In truth, he was becoming jittery in his hazy state as the hands dipped lower, circling his navel. Lee's own hands came up to cup his face, lifting it.

Struggling to focus through the cloud that made his mind see in double perspective, Gaara didn't quite register Lee's head dipping.

That was until a wet, feather-light kiss pressed to his lips, and then a fist emerged from the hot mess of bodies, and punched Lee almost to the floor.

Startled, Gaara turned to the assailant.

Neji stood, legs spread in a fighting stance, breathing heavily. His dark hair was tangled down his back as he glared at Lee. The hands that were exploring Gaara's body were ripped away as Neji approached the invisible molester and the man fled.

"Come 'en."

A fist closed around his forearm and physically hauled him from the crowd.

"N-neji?"

"Come '_en_, Gaara." Pale, pale grey eyes flashed furiously at him in the gloom as Gaara allowed himself to be dragged away from the dancers and into the deep shadow of one of the alcoves. There, Neji slammed him against the back wall, large hands gripping his shoulders.

"Whit," his voice shaking with pure rage, Neji eyes were slits as he glared at him, "dae ye hink yoo're daein'?!"

"Um…" Words seemed out of reach. He slurred a vague excuse, and then fell silent at the unfiltered murder in Neji's white eyes.

"Ye waur bein' molested." The brunet's grip was so tight, Gaara could feel the points of pain from each fingertip.

"Ouch," he growled.

The grip didn't loosen.

"Gaara, ye listen tae me! Whit ye did was _glaikit, _those fowk ur _sick_, they'll prey oan ye_—"_

The words carried on, but they sounded like a foreign language to the redhead.

_You sick fuck Gaara. You aren't my son. Weak. You disgust me._

He tried to gasp an apology, but the words clogged in his throat before he could try.

_Weak. Crying Gaara? You sick fuck. Turned on. You're no child of mine._

Tears ran, thick globs that dripped down his face in dark lines. Every inch of flesh on his face flinched away from the expected rain of slaps and punches. He expected claws like rakes on the tender flesh of his cheek.

"S-s-sorry!" He gasped out. He was vaguely aware of hands shaking him.

_Icicles from his roof. Sharp. Pointy little teeth as a man screamed, animal like._

"Gaara!"

He came to, slowly. The wall was a rock at his back, supporting him. The hands that had clutched his shoulders were soft now; cradling him.

"Gaara?"

"I'm fine." The familiar lie hissed out of him with a falling breath.

"Come." Neji pulled him out of the alcove, "Stagger, an' act blooter'd."

It really wasn't too hard. Gaara let Neji support him up the stairs and lead him into the still empty VIP lounge. Empty glasses were stacked on the table and a jacket, Deidara's, was draped on the seat.

"Weel, some'un's bin haur."

Neji sat Gaara gently in the seat, and spread Deidara's jacket on his knees. "Gaara, eyes oan me."

The redhead met the pale irises with difficulty.

"Teel me," the Scot asked, simply.

He sat there with the patience of a much older man, as Gaara struggled with the words.

"My father," he said eventually, "hated me."

The brunet wasn't satisfied. "There's mair tae thes."

_How could he know so much? _It was a quiet thought in Gaara's mind. How could the pale-eyed Scot see him so easily? Not even Temari saw him fully sometimes.

So Gaara told him. He spoke until his voice was slurring less, and instead was hoarse and dry. Neji's eyes were swirling thunderstorms by the time he'd finished. Without a word, he leant over and pulled Gaara's smaller frame into his arms, tucked the vibrant red hair into his neck and wrapped his long body around the redhead's smaller one.

"There's anither memory thocht. Whit haunts ye, Gaara?"

It slashed into his mind, tearing and savaging with its blizzard-cold frigidness. Crumbling under the onslaught, he fought the arms that trapped him. He'd taken the Hyuuga by surprise. The cage of skin loosened, and Gaara was darting out of the grip.

"Gaara."

Strong hands on his hips, immovable. They sat him back down on the seat in front of the owner of them.

"Icicles," Gaara whispered. He felt the fingers clench on his waist as he stared out toward the thick drape. Faint red lights from the club flickered though it. "It began with icicles."

Only Neji's warmth, the weight of his hands, and the light touch of his slow breath on Gaara's nape betrayed that he was actually there at all. Other than that, he was silent as no one was silent.

"Teel me."

"From the roof," Gaara carried on, his voice barely an exhaled breath. "He was… he was throwing them. Throwing them at me."

"Wae didnae ye run?"

"Ropes," Gaara whispered, "He tied me to the apple tree."

The fingers twitched angrily, but Neji remained silent. Gaara grappled with the memory as it threatened to consume him again.

"Some of them hit," the redhead finally went on, "…They hurt. And then there was the dog."

"Th' dog?"

"Yeah. From next door."

The memory was rearing its ugly, serpentine head from the chamber where he had buried it his entire life. The young Labrador that Gaara had often watched gambolling with its owner past the house on walks.

"It bit him."

"Yer faither?"

Pointy, little milk teeth of a not-yet fully grown chocolate Labrador. Intelligence in those dark, brown eyes as it seized the leg of the man who was hurting him. Savaged the ankle, small growls and yips as it made small lacerations in that man's abhorrent flesh.

"He killed it."

"_Whit?"_

"Kicked it to death," Gaara confirmed, his voice toneless.

_Whimpers. The sully of iron, liquid in the air. Brown eyes dulling in the matted fur of its head, blood not yet with the chance to pool on the cold ground._

The redhead tried to finish in a rush, to get it over with; but the memories overwhelmed him. The violence re-emerged with a vengeance. _Glazed eyes. Body still warm in his arms. Warm; liquid crimson running in rivulets down his arm._

"He put the dog at my feet," Gaara continued, staring unseeingly now, "Went in to change his trousers and shoes. Then he came out, untied me. Handed me the dog. Then he let out this horrible, animal scream. Everyone came running."

"They saw ye wi' th' pup?"

"Yeah," Gaara whispered.

The pause stretched on. "They thought ye killed i'." It was not a question.

Gaara's silence spoke for him.

"But ye didnae."

"He was called Pip. Pip the puppy." Guilt rose in a wave.

_Pip, the baby Labrador; the only one who'd ever tried to save him. To reach across the void of loneliness to the frightened boy; the only way as a warm corpse gushing a fluid of life._

"Gaara, tha' _wisnae_ yer faut."

Disbelief touched him. Of course it was.

"Gaara." Rough hands were turning him, holding his bone-white face with sudden gentleness. In the fractured light, the Scot's eyes were pools of mercury that glowed with a furious anger. "If Ah coods kill heem reit noo, Ah woods."

"It's okay." Whispered against the satin of the darkness. Gaara tried to avoid those bright eyes, but they were _un_avoidable.

"Come jink wi' meh."

"What?" He blinked.

"Dance, Gaara." A sigh of exasperation, and then Neji had closed his slender, long-fingered hand over his smaller one and pulled him out of the VIP room. Down the stairs again; past the alcohol-slicked bar and into the throbbing crowd on the dance floor.

"_Neji!"_ Gaara cried, shrill and scared as he felt skin and fabric pushing against him.

"Aam haur."

He was. His chest, garbed in the soft white shirt, was a solid wall that Gaara pressed himself to. A shot was pushed into his hand, a dark-haired man with red triangles on his cheeks urging him to drink it. The redhead forced it down, and then watched as Neji followed suit with practiced ease. More were passed, and before long, Gaara found himself again in the pleasant haze where the hot friction of bodies on his did not inspire paranoia in the deepest part of his gut.

Through lidded eyes, he blinked up at Neji. Twin orbs of white watched him intensely.

"Ah got ye."

Someone ground against his ass and Neji pulled him further into his chest. Gaara breathed in the heavy scent of aftershave and sweat for a single, calming second, and then a mosh pit reminiscent of a tornado came bowling straight through the centre of the dance floor, and ripped him clean away from the brunet.

He hit the floor, hard; jarring his elbow. Disorientated, he barely got himself off the floor and staggered away from the roars and mass movement of the mosh until he hit a chest.

"Lost sheep!"

"Are shu calling me dash cosh I hash a sheep on my shweater?" Gaara slurred, swaying into Lee's chest. Arms enclosed him; Lee's arms, and guided him out of the way of uproar.

"In here, little sheep."

Gaara vaguely noticed that this particular alcove was deeper and distinctly bowl shaped. A round cushioned seat-chair thing lurked in the bowels of it.

"Here." Lee sat him down, wide, dark eyes batting curiously at him, "If you stand up in this state, you'll fall over."

"Thanksh." Lee had turned into two spinning figures in the green irises. "Shtop shpinning."

The dark-haired man who was barely an acquaintance said nothing at first. Then, "Gaara…"

Lips on his temples, his cheeks. Light, wet pecks down the bridge of his nose. Long, skinny fingers crept up the back of his neck and tugged lightly on the choppy red locks.

"Lee, what-"

"Shh."

Lee's mouth on his, hard and wet and rough. His brain a confused cloud from the alcohol, Gaara obediently spread his thighs accommodatingly when Lee pushed in between them for better access. A tongue flickered over his slack lips and pushed it. It slid wetly over Gaara's teeth and then plunged in deeper. Lee's fingers were insistent at Gaara's jaw, and he unhinged his mouth as far as he could so that Lee could curl his entire tongue inside.

In doing so, he seemed to release something in the sable-haired man, for his hands clenched around Gaara's skull and mashed their faces together. Wanting to tell him that it hurt, Gaara let out a little whine in his throat and wiggled pathetically. His vision span in a kaleidoscope of Lee's face.

"Shhhh." Those skinny fingers at the top button of his jeans; popping it open with ease.

"Nn, Lee, I-"

"Sh, Gaara," came the heated reply. The hand closed around the semi through the redhead's jeans, and the distant twinge of fear was not enough to alarm him that something was wrong. Slowly, the stranger stroked it to near-hardness.

"Oh, Gaara, baby."

Hot, wet kisses up his navel as Lee snagged the hem of his t-shirt and lifted it to reveal pink nipples, swollen after the heat of the dancing. He bit.

"Ow!"

"Gaara, quiet." It was a sharp warning, as Lee swirled his tongue around the other, and then sat on the seat next to him. More roughly than Gaara thought was necessary, he was pulled onto the khaki-clad man's lap as his mouth was ravaged once again. Pressing into his crotch, Gaara could feel the hard, hot ridge of the other man. Gripping his ass as leverage, Lee rocked the redhead's buttocks over the bulge in the khaki trousers and released a breathy moan. "Yeah, like that." Another rock, and then Lee gave a shallow thrust, rolling Gaara in a circular motion.

Limply astride the man, the redhead tried to voice an objection, but it was stifled in Lee's mouth and another, more vigorous thrust to make their hard-ons collide.

Gaara suddenly found himself rolled onto his back. Too impatient to slide off the black skinny jeans Temari had made him wear, a hand was instead thrust into his boxers. Lee took Gaara's reluctant erection in his fist and began to pump. In spite of himself, and the alcohol that dampened his system, the Sabaku's back arched off the seat as Lee opened his thighs and slammed their dicks together.

"Please…"

"More, baby?" It was a whisper against the shell of his ear under his fiery locks.

"Stop. Please, stop."

Teeth clamped on his earlobe as the hands started to tug down Gaara's jeans. Started — because they never finished. Gaara, regaining one function of his body, kicked out, narrowly avoiding the other man's crotch.

"The fuck-?!"

He ran. Until hands grabbed at the back of his jumper and nearly throttled him. Lee's face was furious; his eyes like cold coal. He pushed Gaara against the wall outside the alcove, the anger insipid on his face.

"Gaara..?"

Recognition dawning at the distinct accent, the redhead willed it to be anyone but; for the betrayal in that tone to be a mistake.

One glance over was enough to see the confused look on Neji's face.

"Whaur hae ye bin? I bin lookin' fer ye."

"I-" He was at a loss for speech, "I was just-"

"Who are you?" Lee curled his arms possessively around the slender body he had against the wall.

Neji shrugged. "A fren' ay tha' there ginger ye hae agains't th' wall."

Lee's eyes narrowed. "You look like a creep."

"Hain heem ower."

A deep scowl. "Why should I hand him over?"

"Gaara." The plea was quiet, but it was there. "Come 'en."

"Oh fuck off." Lee pressed his lips to Gaara's again.

There was a roar like a wounded beast, and Lee was suddenly off the floor, the front of his shirt bunched up in Neji's fists.

The brunet's face was _livid._ The skinnier man remained suspended for a bare few seconds, before Neji seemed to get a hold of his temper. "Yoo're nae wirth mah time." He turned to Gaara, "But _yeh_."

Once again, the redhead's wrist was swamped in that of the Scot as he towered above him, glowering at the floored molester. "Yeh're comin' wi' _meh_."

And with that, Neji tugged him hard enough to nearly send him sprawling, and they disappeared down a moodily-lit corridor branching off around the large, lower room.

"Neji!" Gaara gasped as the man tugged him relentlessly, "Neji, shlow down, I can't-"

He stumbled and half-fell, but a twist from the man holding him and he was somehow upright and backed against a wall. They had gone far enough down the corridor that there were only the faint, ragged breaths of a couple wreathed in shadows further down. They had left the rest of the populace behind.

A fist around each forearm, Neji's opalescent eyes bore into Gaara's. "Whit is he tae ye?"

A blink. "I don't know wha' shure talkin' ab-"

"Gaara!" Desperation imbued the word. "Jus' teel meh."

But a side of Gaara that he had been suppressing and ignoring and pretending didn't exist was beginning to make a drunken appearance.

He turned his nose up stubbornly. "What ish Naruto to _you!_"

The brunet's eyebrows plunged. "'At is nane ay yer business."

It did nothing to ease Gaara's mulishness. "Well then, jusht take me back t' _Lee!_"

That did nothing to the bloody murder in Neji's eyes. "Ah wulnae, until Ah ken whit he means tae ye. Wae waur ye wi' heem jus'noo?"

"That ish nonnaya bish-nish," Gaara tried to muster a cold look of disdain, swaying as he stood.

"_Gaara!"_ A fist slammed against the wall above him.

"Goworn," the redhead baited him with confidence even the alcohol would never give him, "Doo'it. I'm yooshe'd t' gettin' punsched anyway. Goworn!"

Neji retreated, the fist that punched the wall drawing back, bunched. Fear flared – an acrid, biting sting of acid that burned through his entire body as he realised that once Neji hit him, the fragile life he'd built up over the last two months would fracture into dust.

The terror an overwhelming beast in his ribcage, he shut his eyes and waited for the impact.

It came, but not how Gaara would ever have expected it.

It came as soft, cupid-bow lips on his own; silk and satin after Lee's rushed slurping. The fingertips of the clenched fist touched lightly on his cheek, brushed a lock of hair over his ear before they trailed around his neck to splay and cup the back of his head.

A sliver of tongue wetted his lower lip and a shudder rolled through Gaara's body. His lips parted, but the tongue didn't come again.

It was a sweet, short kiss, and then it was gone. The weight of Neji's body, his hands, his mouth all left at once. The tall Scot stood away from the shorter American, the shutters falling into place over his face until his eyes flatly appraised him.

A brief flicker of something: a flash of fire and heat and molten want. "That's why." And then it was gone. And so was Neji.

Gaara curled up against the wall. Further down the corridor, he heard the slap of skin on skin, a woman's moan. He wrapped his arms around his knees, buried his face in the crook of his elbow — and that was how Temari found him.

* * *

**In spite of it all, I never got onto the concert part! This puts me back a little bit, I can't lie... Oh well, next chapter there'll be more about Neji's conflict of attractions, maybe a smidge about Naruto and Sasuke, and the 'pink-haired girl' in the photo, and probably some more of Gaara having horrible flashbacks of his horrible past [:(]**

**Again, Altnaharra IS real, but not how I've described it.**

**I've never been to Scotland, or Leeds. I am making this aaaaall up, so if you live in either of these places and think I've described them **_**terribly **_**then..um...sorry :3**

**AND I MADE ROCK LEE MEAN AND RAPEY, I'M SO SORRY LEE I LOVE YOU SO MUCH I'LL NEVER DO THIS AGAIN!  
**

**Oo, also, I have another note! In Gaara's speech, he says 'sweater' (because he's American), but in description, it says 'jumper' (because I'm British!) **

**I don't know when the next chapter is..hopefully soon! IF YOU HAVE READ THIS FAR THEN I LOVE YOU AND PROMISE YOU A COOKIE MANSION! If you feel up to it, then reviews put a great big smile on my face like I just saw a rainbow unicorn! :D  
**

**Have a nice day all!**


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